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JL'iiii Thatched Cottage 



TI1E AUTHOR OE 

n\SS TOOSEY’S 
/nissiON 


CHICAGO 


\V. H. CONKEY COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 



39096 


V 


Library of Cony res. 

lwu Copies Received 

AUG 27 1900 

Copyright entry 

UUj,, 

2-0 o «■ 2. 


SECOND copy. 

iM'Vfc.*} to 

ONOEN D'VISION, 

SEP 1 1900 


PZ3 

.b)51^\\ 

u 


Copyright, 1900, by W. B. Conkky Company. 


73982 


Ol "5023 


LADDIE 


CHAPTER I. 

“Third-class forward! Here you are, mum. 
Plenty of room this way! Now then! that 
ain’t third, that’s first. Come, look alive! All 
right behind there?” 

Doors bang ; a whistle ; and the train moves 

off. 

The guard had thrust into a third-class car- 
riage, already nearly full, a bandbox with a 
blue spotted handkerchief round it, and a 
bunch of Michaelmas daisies, southernwood, 
and rosemary tucked under the knot at the 
top; a marketing-basket, one flap of which 
was raised by a rosy-cheeked apple emitting 
a powerful smell; a bundle done up in a 
handkerchief of the same pattern as that 
round the bandbox, only bright yellow ; a large 
cotton umbrella of a pale-green color, with a 
decided waist to it; and a pair of pattens! 
Anything else? Oh yes, of course! there was 
an old woman who belonged to the things; 

3 


4 


LADDIE. 


but she was so small and frightened and over- 
whelmed that she appeared quite a trifle 
beside her belongings, and might easily have 
been overlooked altogether. She remained 
just where the guard had pushed her, stand- 
ing in the carriage, clutching as many of her 
things as she could keep hold of, and being 
jerked by the motion of the train, now against 
a burly bricklayer, and now against his red- 
faced wife who sat opposite ; while her dazzled, 
blinking eyes followed the hedges and banks 
that whirled past, and her breath came with a 
catch and a gasp every time a bridge crossed 
the line, as if it were a wave coming over her. 
Her fellow-travelers watched her, in silence at 
first, having rather resented her entrance, as 
the carriage was already sufficiently full ; but 
when a sudden lurch of the train sent her vio- 
lently forward against a woman, from whom 
she cannoned off against the bricklayer, and 
flattened her drawn black satin bonnet out of 
all shape, the man found his tongue, which 
was a kind one, though slow in moving. 

“Hold hard, missus!” he said; “we don’t 
pay nothing extra for sitting down, so maybe 
you could stow some of them traps of yours 
under the seat, and make it kind of more com- 
fortable all round. Here, mother, lend a hand 


LADDIE. 


5 


with the Old lady’s things, can’t you? That’s 
my missus, mum, that is, my better arf, as the 
saying is, and no chap needn’t wish for bet- 
ter, though I say it as shouldn’t.” 

This remark produced a playful kick, and 
a “Get along with you!” from the red-faced 
wife, which did not show it was taken amiss, 
but that she was pleased with the delicate 
compliment, and she helped to arrange the 
various baskets and bundles with great energy 
and good-nature. 

“Now that’s better, ain’t it? Now you can 
just set yourself down. Lor’ bless the woman! 
whatever is she frightened at?” 

For the bustling arrangements were seri- 
ously alarming to the old woman, who was not 
sure that a sudden movement might not upset 
the train, or that, if she let go of anything in an 
unguarded moment, she might not fall out and 
be whirled off like those hurrying blackberry- 
bushes or patches of chalk on the embankment; 
though, indeed, it was only her pattens and 
umbrella that she was clutching as her one 
protection. The first thing that aroused her 
from her daze of fear was the bricklayer’s little 
boy beginning to cry, or, as his mother called 
it, “to beller, ” in consequence of his mother’s 
elbow coming sharply in contact with his head ; 


6 


LADDIE. 


and, at the sound, the old woman’s hand let 
go of the umbrella and felt for the marketing- 
basket, and drew out one of the powerful, yel- 
low apples, and held it out toward the sufferer. 
The “bellerin” stopped instantaneously at 
such a refreshing sight, even while the mouth 
was wide open and two tears forcing their way 
laboriously out of the eyes. Finding that she 
could accomplish this gymnastic feat without 
any dangerous results, the old woman seemed 
to gain more confidence, seated herself more 
comfortably, straightened her bonnet, smiled 
at the bricklayer, nodded to the little boy, 
and, by the time the train stopped at the next 
station, felt herself quite a bold and expe- 
rienced traveler. 

“This ain’t London, I take it?” she asked, 
in a little, thin, chirrupy voice. 

“London? bless you! no. If you’re bound 
for London you’ll have another five hours to go 
before you can get there.” 

“Oh, yes, I know as it’s a terrible long way 
off, but we seemed coming along at such a 
pace as there wasn’t no knowing.” 

“You ain’t used to traveling, seemings?” 

“Oh! I’ve been about as much as most folks. 
I’ve been to Martel a smartish few times when 
Laddie was there, and once I went to Bristol 


LADDIE. 


7 


when I was a gal keeping company with my 
master, but that ain’t yesterday, you’ll be 
thinking.” 

“Martel’s a nice place, I’ve heard tell?” 

“So it be ; but it’s a terrible big place, how- 
ever. ” 

“You’ll find London a pretty sight bigger. ” 

“I know London pretty well though I 
haven’t never been there; for Laddie, he’s 
been up there nigh about fifteen year, and he’s 
told me a deal about it. I know as it’s all 
rubbish what folks say about the streets being 
paved with gold and such like, though the 
young folks do get took in; but Laddie, he 
says to me, ‘Mother,’ says he, ‘London is 
paved with hard work like any other town; 
but,’ he says, ‘good honest work is worth its 
weight in gold, any day;’ so it’s something 
more than a joke after all.” 

The old woman grew garrulous as the train 
rushed along. Laddie was a subject, evi- 
dently, upon which her tongue could not help 
being eloquent. 

“An old hen with one chick,” the bricklayer 
whispered to his wife; but they listened good- 
naturedly enough to the stories of the wonder- 
ful baby, who had been larger, fatter, and 
stronger than any baby before or since, who 


8 


LADDIE. 


had taken notice, begun teething, felt his feet, 
run off, and said “daddy” at an incredibly 
early period. 

Mrs. Bricklayer nodded her head and said, 
“Really now!” and “Well, I never!” inwardly, 
however, reserving her fixed opinion that the 
infant Bricklayers had outdone the wonderful 
Laddie in every detail of babyhood. 

Father Bricklayer could not restrain a 
mighty yawn in the middle of a prolonged 
description of how Laddie’s gums were lanced; 
but at this juncture they reached the station, 
which was the destination of the bricklayer 
and his family, so the old woman was not 
wounded by the discovery of their want of 
thorough interest, and she parted from them 
with great regret, feeling that she had lost 
some quite old friends in them. But she soon 
found another listener, and a more satisfactory 
one, in a young woman, whom she had hardly 
noticed before, as she sat in the opposite cor- 
ner of the carriage with her head bent down, 
neither speaking nor being spoken to. She 
had a very young baby wrapped in her shawl, 
and as one by one the other passengers left 
the carriage and she was left alone with the old 
woman the two solitary creatures drew to- 
gether in the chill November twilight; and, 


LADDIE. 


9 


by and by, the wee baby was in the old 
woman’s arms, and the young mother, almost 
a child herself, was telling her sad little story 
and hearing Laddie’s story in return. There 
never had been such a son ; he had got on so 
wonderfully at school, and had been a favor- 
ite with every one, — parson and schoolmaster; 
“such a headpiece the lad had!” 

“Was Laddie his real name?’’ 

“Why, no! he were christened John Clement, 
after his father and mine; but he called him- 
self ‘Laddie’ before ever he could speak plain, 
and it stuck to him. His father was for mak- 
ing a schoolmaster of him, but Laddie, he 
didn’t take to that, so we sent him into Martel 
to the chemist there, to be shop-boy ; and Mr. 
Stokes, the gentleman as keeps the shop, 
took to him wonderful, and spoke of him to 
one and another, saying how sharp he were, 
and such, till at last one of the doctor’s took 
him up and taught him a lot; and when he 
went up to London he offered to take Laddie, 
and said as he’d take all the expense, and as 
he’d make a man of him. He come to see me 
himself, he did, and talked me over, for I was 
a bit loath to let him go, for’t was the year as 
the master died; he died just at fall and 


10 


LADDIE. 


Laddie went at Christmas, and I was feeling a 
bit unked and lonesome.” 

“Were that long ago?” 

“Yes: ’twere a goodish time. Fifteen year 
come Christmas.” 

“But you’ll have seen him many a time 
since?” 

“Well, no, I ain’t. Many’s the time as he’s 
been coming down, but something always 
come between. Once he had fixed the very day 
and all, and then he were called off on busi- 
ness to Brighton or somewhere. That were a 
terrible disappointment to the boy ; my heart 
were that sore for him as I nearly forgot how 
much I’d been longing for it myself.” 

“But he’ll have wrote?” 

“Bless you, yes! he’s a terrible one for his 
mother, he is. He’ve not written so much of 
late, maybe; but then, folks is that busy in 
London they hasn’t the time to do things as 
we has in the country; but I’ll warrant he’ve 
written to me every time he had a spare mo- 
ment; and so when I sees old Giles, the post- 
man, come up, and I says, ‘Anything for me, 
master?’ and he says ‘Nothing for you to-day, 
mum’ (for I were always respected in Sunny- 
brook from a girl up), I thinks to myself, 
thinks I, ‘it ain’t for want of the will as my 


LADDIE. 


11 


Laddie hasn’t wrote.’ And then the presents 
as he’d send me, bless his heart! Bank notes 
it were at first, till he found as I just paid ’em 
into the bank and left ’em there ; for what did 
I want with bank-notes? And then he sent 
me parcels of things, silk gownds fit for a 
duchess, and shawls all the colors of the rain- 
bow, till I almost began to think he’d forgot 
what sort of an old body I be. Just to think 
of the likes of me in such fine feathers! And 
there were flannel enough for a big family, and 
blankets; and then he sent tea and sugar, I 
don’t know how many pounds of it; but it 
were good, and no mistake, and I’d like a cup 
of it now for you and me, my dear.” 

“And have he sent for you now to come and 
live with him?” 

“No, he don’t know nothing about it, and I 
mean to take him all by surprise. Old Master 
Heath, as my cottage belongs to, died this 
summer; and the man as took his farm wants 
my cottage for his shepherd, and he give me 
notice to quit. I felt it a bit and more, for I’d 
been in that cottage thirty-five year, spring 
and fall, and I knows every crack and cranny 
about it, and I fretted terrible at first ; but at 
last I says to myself, ‘Don’t you go for to fret; 
go right off to Laddie, and he’ll make a home 


12 


LADDIE. 


for you and glad;’ and so I just stored my 
things away and come right off.” 

“He’ve been doing well in London?” 

‘‘Well, my Laddie’s a gentleman! He’s a 
regular doctor, and keeps a carriage, and has 
a big house and servants. Mr. Mason, our 
parish doctor, says as he’s one of the first doc- 
tors in London, and that I may well be proud 
of him. Bless me ! how pleased the boy will 
be to see his old mother! Maybe I shall see 
him walking in the streets, but if I don’t, I’ll 
find his house and creep in at the back door so 
as he shan’t see me, and tell the gal to say to 
the doctor (doctor, indeed! my Laddie!) as 
some one wants to see him very particular. 
And then — ” The old woman broke down 
here, half sobbing, half laughing, with an 
anticipation too tenderly, ecstatically sweet for 
words. ‘‘My dear,” she said, as she wiped 
her brimming eyes, ‘‘I’ve thought of it and 
dreamt of it so long, and to think as I should 
have lived to see it!” 

The expectations of her traveling companion 
were far less bright, though she had youth to 
paint the future with bright hopes, and only 
nineteen winters to throw into the picture dark 
shadows of foreboding. She had been well 
brought up, and gone into comfortable ser- 


LADDIE. 


13 


vice; and her life had run on in a quiet, happy 
course till she met with Harry Joyce. 

“Folks says all manner of ill against him,” 
said the girl’s trembling voice; “but he were 
always good to me. I didn’t know much 
about him, except as he liked me, and I liked 
him dearly; for he come from London at fair- 
time, and he stopped about the place doing odd 
jobs, and he come after me constant. My 
mistress were sore set against him, but I were 
pretty near mad about him ; so we was mar- 
ried without letting any folks at home know 
nought about it. Oh, yes! we was married 
all right. I’ve got my lines, as I could show 
you as there wasn’t no mistake about it; and 
it were all happy enough for a bit, and he got 
took on as ostler at the George; and there 
wasn’t a steadier, better behaved young feller 
in the place. But, oh, dear! it didn’t last 
long. He came in one day and said as how 
he’d lost his place, and was going right off to 
London to get work there. I didn’t say never 
a word, but I got up and begun to put our bits 
of things together; and then he says as he’d 
best go first and find a place for me, and I 
must go home to my mother. I thought it 
would have broke my heart, I did, to part with 
him; but he stuck to it, and I went home. 


14 


LADDIE. 


Our village is nigh upon eight mile from Mer- 
rifield, and I’d never heard a word from 
mother since I wrote to tell them I was wed. 
When I got home that day, I almost thought 
as they’d have shut the door on me. A story 
had got about as I wasn’t married at all, and 
had brought shame and trouble on my folks; 
and my coming home like that made people 
talk all the more, though I showed them my 
lines and told my story truthful. Well, 
mother took me in, and I bided there till my 
baby was born ; and she and father was good 
to me, I’ll not say as they wasn’t; but they 
were always uneasy and suspicious-like about 
Harry; and I got sick of folks looking and 
whispering, as if I ought to be ashamed when 
I had nought to be ashamed of. And I wrote 
to Harry more than once to say as I’d rather 
come to him, if he’d a hole to put me in; and 
he always wrote to bid me bide a bit longer, 
till baby come; and then I just wrote and said 
I must come anyhow, and so set off. But oh! I 
feel scared to think of London, and Harry 
maybe not glad to see me.” 

It was dark by this time, and the women 
peering out could often only see the reflection 
of their own faces in the windows, or ghostly 
puffs of smoke flitting past. Now and then, 


LADDIE. 


15 


little points of light in the darkness told of 
homes where there were warm hearths and 
bright lights; and once, up above, a star 
showed, looking kindly and home-like to the 
old woman. “Every bit as if it were that very 
same star as comes out over the elm tree by 
the pond, but that ain’t likely, all this way off. ’’ 
But soon the clouds covered the friendly 
star, and a fine rain fell, splashing the win- 
dows with tiny drops, and making the lights 
outside blurred and hazy. And then the 
scattered lights drew closer together, and the 
houses formed into rows, and gas lamps 
marked out perspective lines; and then there 
were houses bordering the line on either side 
instead of banks and hedges; and then the 
train stopped, and a damp and steaming 
ticket-collector opened the door, letting in a 
puff of fog, and demanded the tickets, and 
was irritated to a great pitch of exasperation 
by the fumbling and slowness of the two 
women, who had put their tickets away in 
some place of extra safety and forgotten where 
that place was. And then in another minute 
the train was in Paddington ; gas and hurry 
and noise, porters, cabs, and shrieking 
engines, — a nightmare, indeed, to the dazzled 
country eyes and the deafened country ears. 


16 


LADDIE. 


CHAPTER II. 

In a quiet, old-fashioned street, near Port- 
man Square, there is a door with a brass plate 
upon it, bearing the name “Dr. Carter.” 
The door is not singular in possessing a brass 
plate, for almost every house in the street 
displays one, being inhabited nearly entirely 
by doctors and musical professors. I do not 
attempt to explain why it is so, — whether that 
part of London is especially unhealthy, and so 
requires constant and varied medical advice, 
or whether there is something in the air con- 
ducive to harmony; or whether the musical 
professors attract the doctors, or the doctors 
the professors, I leave to more learned heads 
to discover, only hazarding the suggestion that 
perhaps the highly-strung musical nerves may 
be an interesting study to the faculty, or that 
music may have charms to sooth the savage 
medical breast, or drive away the evil spirits 
of the dissecting-room. Anyhow, the fact 
remains that North Crediton Street is the 
resort of doctors and musical men, and that 
on of the doors stands the plate of Dr. Carter. 


LADDIE. 


17 


It was an old-fashioned, substantially built 
house, built about the beginning of the last 
century, when people knew how to build solid- 
ly if not beautifully. It had good thick walls, 
to which you might whisper a secret without 
confiding it to your next door neighbor, and 
firm, well-laid floors, on which you might 
dance, if you had a mind to, without fear of 
descending suddenly into the basement. 
There were heavy frames to the windows, and 
small squares of glass, and wooden staircases 
with thick, twisted banisters, — a house, alto- 
gether, at which housemaids looked with con- 
tempt, as something infinitely less “ genteel’ ' 
than the “splendid mansions” of lath and 
plaster, paint and gilding, which are run up 
with such magic speed now-a-days. We have 
no need to ring the bell and disturb the soft- 
voiced, deferential man-servant, out of livery 
from the enjoyment of his evening paper in 
the pantry, for we can pass uninvited and un- 
announced into Dr. Carter’s consulting room, 
and take a look at it and him. There is nothing 
remarkable about the room ; a bookcase full 
of medical and scientific books ; a large writing 
table with pigeon-holes for papers and a 
stethoscope on the top ; a reading lamp with a 
green shade, and an india-rubber tube to sup- 

2 Laddie 


18 


LADDIE. 


ply it with gas from the burner above ; a side- 
table with more books and papers, and a small 
galvanic battery; a large india-rubber plant in 
the window ; framed photographs of eminent 
physicians and surgeons over the mantel-piece ; 
a fire burning low in the grate; a thick Tur- 
key carpet and heavy leather chairs ; and there 
you have an inventory of the furniture, to 
arrange before your mind’s eye if you think it 
worth while. 

There is something remarkable in the man, 
John Clement Carter, M. D., but I cannot give 
you an inventory of him, or make a broker’s 
list of eyes and forehead, nose and mouth. 
He is not a regularly handsome man, not one 
that a sculptor would model or an artist paint, 
but his is a face that you never forget if you 
have once seen it ; there is something about 
him that makes people move out of his path 
involuntarily; and strangers ask, “Who is 
that?’’ Power is stamped in his deep-set eyes 
and the firm lines of mouth and chin, power 
which gives beauty even to an ugly thing, 
throwing a grandeur and dignity round a black, 
smoky engine, or a huge, ponderous steam- 
hammer. Indeed, power is beauty; for there 
is no real' beauty in weakness, physical or 
mental. His eyes had the beauty of many 


LADDIE. 


19 


doctor’s eyes, — kind and patient from experi- 
ence of human weakness and trouble of all 
sorts, keen and penetrating, as having looked 
through the mists of pain and disease, search- 
ing for hope, ay, and finding it, too, sometimes 
where other men could only find despair ; brave 
and steady, as having met death constantly face 
to face, clear and good, as having looked 
through the glorious glass of science, and seen 
more plainly the more he looked, the working 
of the Everlasting Arms; for surely, when 
science brings confusion and doubt, it proves 
that the eye of the beholder is dim or distorted, 
or that he is too ignorant to use the glass 
rightly. But there is a different look in his 
eyes to-night ; pain and trouble and weakness 
are far from his thoughts ; and he is not gazing 
through the glass of science, though he has a 
“Medical Review’’ open before him and a 
paper-knife in his hand to cut the leaves; his 
eyes have wandered to a bunch of Russian 
violets in a specimen glass on the table ; and 
he is looking through rose-colored spectacles 
at a successful past, a satisfactory present, and 
a beautiful future. 

I need not tell my readers that this Dr. John 
Clement Carter was the Somersetshire boy 
whom good Dr. Savile had taken by the hand, 


20 


LADDIE. 


and whose talents had made the ladder which 
carried him up to eminence. The kind old 
doctor liked to tell the story over a glass of 
port wine to the friends round his shining 
mahogany (he was old fashioned, and thought 
scorn of claret and dinners a la Russe). “I 
was the making of the man,” he would say; 
“and I am as proud of him, by Jove! sir, as if 
he were a son of my own.” 

It is quite as difficult to rise in the world 
gracefully as to come down ; but every one 
agreed that John Carter managed to do it, and 
just from this reason, that there was no pre- 
tence about him. He did not obtrude his low 
origin on every one, forcing it on people’s at- 
tention with that fidgety uneasiness which will 
have people know it if they are interested in 
the subject or not, which is only one remove 
from the unworthy pride that tries to hide it 
away altogether. Neither did he boast of it as 
something very much to his credit ; but to any 
one who cared to know he would say, “My 
family were poor working people in Somerset- 
shire, and I don’t even know if I had a grand- 
father; and I owe everything to Dr. Savile. ” 
And he would say it with a smile and a quiet 
manner, as if it were nothing to be ashamed 
of and nothing to be proud of, but just a fact 


LADDIE. 


21 


which was hardly of interest ; and his manner 
somehow made people feel that birth and 
breeding were, after all, mere insignificant 
circumstances of life, and of no account by the 
side of talent and success. “He’s a good fel- 
low, John Carter, and a clever fellow, too, 
without any humbug about him,” the men 
said ; and the women thought much the same, 
though they expressed it differently. Indeed, 
the glimpse of his early, humble, country life, 
so simply given, without any pretence of con- 
cealment, grew to be considered an effective, 
picturesque background which showed up to 
advantage his present success and dignified 
position. It was quite true that there was no 
humbug or concealment about him ; that was 
the very truth he told; and yet, somehow, as 
time went on the words lost the full meaning 
they had to him at first. Don’t you know, if 
you use the same words frequently, they get 
almost mechanical; even in our prayers, alas! 
they are no longer the expression of our feel- 
ing, but the words come first and the feeling 
follows, or does not follow. And, then, don’t 
you know, sometimes, how we hear with other 
people’s ears, and see with other people’s 
eyes? And so John Carter, when he said those 
simple, truthful words, grew to see the pictur- 


22 


LADDIE. 


esque background, — the thatched cottage, and 
the honey-suckle-covered porch, and the grand 
old patriarch with white hair, one of nature’s 
noblemen, leaning on his staff and blessing his 
son ; and he gradually forgot the pig-sty close 
to the cottage door, and father in a dirty green 
smock and hob-nailed boots, doing what he 
called “mucking it out,’’ and stopping to wipe 
the heat from his brow with a snuffy, red 
cotton handkerchief. 

But come back from the pig-sty to the vio- 
lets which are scenting the consulting-room, 
and luring Dr. Carter, not unwillingly, from 
the “Medical Review’’ to thoughts of the 
giver. Her name is Violet, too, and so are 
her eyes, though the long lashes throw such 
a shadow that you might fancy they were black 
themselves. It is not every one — indeed, it 
is John Carter alone, — who is privileged to 
look straight down into those eyes, and see 
the beauty of their color; only he, poor, 
foolish fellow, forgets to take advantage of 
his opportunity, and only notices the great 
love for him that shines there and turns his 
brain with happiness. His hand trembles as 
he stretches it to take the specimen glass; 
and the cool, fragrant flowers lightly touch 
his lips as he raises them to his face. 


LADDIE. 


23 


4 ‘Pshaw!” I hear you say, reminding me of 
my own words, “there is no beauty in weak- 
ness, and this is weakness indeed ! — a sensible 
man, past the hey-dey and folly of youth, 
growing maudlin and sentimental over a 
bunch of violets!” No, reader, it is power, 
— the strongest power on earth, — the power 
of love. 

He had been used to say that his profession 
was his lady-love, and he had looked on with 
wondering, incredulous eyes at the follies and 
excesses of young lovers; he was inclined to 
think it was a mild form of mania, and re- 
quired physical treatment. And so he reached 
five- and- thirty unscathed, and slightly contemp- 
tuous of others less fortunate than himself; 
when, one day, a girl’s blue eyes looking 
shyly at him through dark lashes, brought him 
down once and forever from his pedestal of 
fancied superiority; and before he could col- 
lect his arguments, or reason himself out of it, 
he was past cure, hopelessly, helplessly, fool- 
ishly in love. They had been engaged for 
two days ; it was two days since this 
clever young doctor, this rising, successful 
man, with such stores of learning, such a solid 
intellect, such a cool, calm brain, had stood 
“blushing and stammering before a girl of 


24 


LADDIE. 


eighteen. If I were to write down the words 
he said, you would think my hero an idiot, 
pure and simple ; the most mawkish and feeble 
twaddle of the most debased of penny period- 
icals was vastly superior to what Dr. Carter 
stammered out that day. But is not this gen- 
erally the case? Beautiful, poetical love- 
scenes are frequent in plays and books, but 
very rare in real life. There is not one love- 
scene in a thousand that would bear being 
taken down in short-hand, printed in plain, 
black type, and read by critical eyes through 
commonplace spectacles. Nevertheless, the 
feelings are no doubt sublime, though the 
words may be ridiculous. He was quite 
another man altogether (happily for him) 
when he went to Sir John Meredith, and told 
him, plainly, that he was no match for his 
daughter as far as birth went. 

“My good fellow,” the sensible little baro- 
net answered, “there are only about ten fam- 
ilies in England that can put their pedigree 
by the side of the Merediths, and it don’t seem 
to me to make much difference, if you rise 
from the ranks yourself, or if your father, or 
grandfather did it.” 

“I can scarcely claim even to be a gentle- 


LADDIE. 


25 


man,” the young man went on, feeling pretty 
sure of success by that time. 

“Not another word, my dear boy; not 
another word! I respect your candor, and I 
esteem you very highly as an honest man, — the 
noblest work of God, you know, eh? — though 
I’d like to hear any one say that you were not 
a gentleman as well. There, go along ! shake 
hands! God bless you! You’ll find Violet in 
the drawing-room. Sly little puss! but I saw 
what was coming — and mind, you dine with 
us this evening at seven, sharp — old fashioned 
folk, old-fashioned hours.” 

I think the wary baronet also respected Dr. 
Carter’s income, and esteemed very highly his 
success, and having weighed the advantages 
of family and birth against success and in- 
come, had found that the latter were the more 
substantial in the worldly scales. 

And so Dr. Carter was dreaming rosy 
dreams that evening in his quiet room, as was 
fit and proper after two days’ wandering in 
Fairyland with Violet Meredith. But as the 
scent of the violets had led him to think of the 
giver, so it drew his thoughts away from her 
again, back to springtime many years ago at 
Sunnybrook, and the bank where the earliest 
violets grew in the sheltered lane leading to 


26 


LADDIE. 


the Croft Farm. Did ever violets smell so 
sweet as those? He remembered one after- 
noon, after school, going’ to fetch the milk from 
the farm, and the scent luring him across the 
little runlet by the side of the path, which was 
swollen into a small, brawling brook by the 
lately-thawed snow. He set down the can 
safely before he made the venture and Dr. 
Carter laughed softly to himself to think how 
short and fat the legs were that found the little 
stream such a mighty stride. He was busy 
diving for the flowers among the layers of 
dead elm leaves, which the blustering autumn 
winds had blown there, when a sound behind 
him caused him to look round, and there was 
the can upset, and the young foxhound, quar- 
tered at the Croft, licking up the white pool 
from the pebbles. In his anger and fear and 
haste, he slipped as he tried to jump back, and 
went full length into the stream, and scram- 
bled out in a sad plight, and went home crying 
bitterly, with a very wet pinafore, and dirty 
face, and empty milk-can, with the cause of 
his mishap, the sweet violets, still clasped un- 
consciously in his little scratched hand. And 
his mother — ah! she was always a good 
mother! He could remember still the com- 
forting feeling of mother’s apron wiping away 


LADDIE. 


27 


dirt and tears, and the sound of her voice bid- 
ding him “Never mind! and hush up like a 
good little Laddie.” His heart felt very warm 
just then toward that mother of his and he 
made up his mind that, cost what trouble it 
might, he would go down and see her before 
he was married, if it were only for an hour or 
two, just to make sure that she was comfort- 
able, and not working about and wearing her- 
self out. His conscience pricked. him a little at 
the thought of what a pleasure the sight of him 
would have been to the old woman, and how 
year after year had slipped away without his 
going down. But still a comforting voice told 
him that he had been substantially a good 
son, and it was accident and not intention that 
had kept him away. “Anyhow,” he said to 
himself, “another month shall not pass without 
my seeing my mother.” 

At this moment the deferential man knocked 
at the door and aroused Dr. Carter to the con- 
sciousness of how far his wandering thoughts 
had carried him from his consulting-room and 
“Medical Review.” 

“What is it, Hyder?” 

“Please, sir, there’s some one wishes to see 
you. I told her as it was too late, and you 


28 


LADDIE. 


was engaged very particular, but she wouldn’t 
be put off nohow, sir. ” 

“What is her name?” 

There was a slight smile disturbing the 
usually unruffled serenity of Mr. Hyder’s face, 
as if he had a lingering remembrance of some- 
thing amusing. 

“She didn’t give no name, sir, and she 
wouldn’t say what she wanted, though I asked 
if a message wouldn’t do; but she said her bus- 
iness was too particular for that, sir.” 

“What sort of person is she?’’ 

The corners of the man’s mouth twitched, 
and he had to give a little cough to conceal an 
incipient chuckle. 

“Beg your pardon, sir. She appears to be 
from the country, sir. Quite a countrified, 
homely old body, sir.’’ 

Perhaps the odor of the violets and the 
country memories they had called up made 
him more amiably inclined; but instead of the 
sharp, decided refusal the servant expected, 
“Tell her it is long past my time for seeing 
patients, and I am busy, and she must call 
again to-morrow,’’ he said, “Well, show her 
in;’’ and the man withdrew in surprise. 

“Countrified, homely old body.’’ Somehow 
the description brought back to his mind his 


LADDIE. 


29 


mother coming down the brick path from the 
door at home, with her Sunday bonnet on, 
and her pattens in her hand, and the heavy- 
headed double stocks and columbines tapping 
against her short petticoats. The doctor 
smiled to himself; and even while he smiled 
the door was pushed open, and before him he 
saw, with a background of the gas-lit hall and 
the respectful Hyder, by this time developed 
into an uncontrollable grin, his mother, in her 
Sunday bonnet and with her pattens in her 
hand. 


30 


LADDIE. 


CHAPTER III. 

Reader, think of some lovely picture of rus- 
tic life, with tender lights and pleasant shad- 
ows, with hard lines softened, and sharp angles 
touched into gentle curves, with a background 
of picturesque, satisfying appropriateness, 
with the magic touches that bring out the 
beauty and refinement and elegance of the 
scene, which are really there, and that subtly 
tone down all the roughness and awkward- 
ness and coarseness, which are also equally 
there. And then, imagine it, if you can, chang- 
ing under your very eyes, with glaring lights 
and heavy shadows deepening and sharpening 
and hardening wrinkles and angles and lines, 
exaggerating defects, bringing coarseness and 
age and ugliness into painful prominence, and 
taking away at a sweep the pretty, rural back- 
ground which might have relieved and soothed 
the eye, and putting a dull, commonplace, 
incongruous one in its place. It was some- 
thing of this sort that happened to John Carter 
that night, when the picture he had been 
painting with the sweet lights of love and 


LADDIE. 


31 


childhood’s fancies, and the tender shadows 
of memory throwing over it all soft tones of 
long ago and far away, suddenly stood before 
him in unvarnished reality, with all the glamor 
taken away, an every-day fact in his present 
London life. 

I am glad to write it of him, that, for the 
first minute, pleasure was the uppermost feel- 
ing in his mind. First thoughts are often the 
best and purest. He started up, saying, 
“Mother! why, mother!” in the same tone of 
glad surprise as he would have done fifteen 
years before, if she had come unexpectedly 
into the shop at Martel; he did not even 
think if the door was closed, or what Mr. 
Hyder would think ; he did not notice that she 
was crumpled and dirty with travel, or that 
she put her pattens down on his open book 
and upset the glass of violets; he just took 
hold of her trembling, hard-worked hands, 
and kissed her furrowed old cheek, wet with 
tears of unutterable joy, and repeated 
“Mother! why, mother!” 

I am glad to write it of him ; glad that she 
had that great happiness, realizing the hopes 
and longings of years past, consoling in days 
to come, when she had to turn back to the past 
for comfort, or forward to the time of perfect 


32 


LADDIE. 


satisfaction. There are these exquisite mo- 
ments in life, let people say what they will of 
the disappointments and vanity of the world, 
when hope is realized, desire fulfilled ; but it 
is just for a moment, no more, — just a fore- 
taste of the joys that shall be hereafter, when 
every moment of the long years of eternity 
will be still more full and perfect, when we 
shall “wake up” and “be satisfied.” 

She was clinging, meanwhile, to his arm, 
sobbing out, “Laddie, my boy, Laddie!” with 
her eyes too dim with tears to see his face 
clearly, or to notice how tall and grand and 
handsome her boy was grown, and what a gen- 
tleman. Presently, when she was seated in 
the arm-chair, and had got her breath again, 
and wiped her foolish old eyes, she was able to 
hunt in her capacious pocket for the silver- 
rimmed spectacles that had descended from 
her father, old Master Pullen in the almshouse, 
and that Laddie remembered well as being 
kept in the old Family Bible, and brought out 
with great pomp and ceremony on Sunday 
evenings. 

“I must have a good look at you, Laddie 
boy,” she said. 

And then I think her good angel must have 
spread his soft wing between the mother and 



“ ‘A most gentlemanly man, Mr. Watt.’ ” — Page 4. 

Miss Toosey’s Mission. 

































































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LADDIE. 


33 


son (though to her mind it seemed only like 
another tear dimming her sight, with a rain- 
bow light on it), to keep her from seeing the 
look that was marring that son’s face. All 
the pleasure was gone, and embarrassment and 
disquiet had taken its place. 

“However did you come, mother?’’ he said, 
trying his best to keep a certain hardness and 
irritation out of his voice. 

“I come by the train, dear,” the old woman 
answered; “and it did terrify me more nor a 
bit at first, I’ll not go for to deny; but, bless 
you ! I soon got over it, and them trains is 
handy sort of things when you gets used to 
’em. I was a good deal put to though when 
we got to London station, there seemed such a 
many folks about, and they did push and 
hurry a body so. I don’t know whatever I 
should adone if a gentleman hadn’t come and 
asked me where I wanted to get to. He were 
a tallish man with whiskers, a bit like Mr. 
Jones over at Martel, and I daresay you knows 
him; but he were terrible kind however.” 

John Carter did not stop to explain that 
there were many tallish men with whiskers in 
London. 

“Why didn’t you write and say you were 
coming?” 

3 Laddie 


34 


LADDIE. 


“Well, there! I thought as I’d give you a 
surprise; and I knew as you’d be worrying 
about the journey and thinking as I’d not be 
able to manage; but I’m not such a helpless 
old body, after all, Laddie.” 

“Who have you left in charge of the cot- 
tage?” 

“Why, I’ve give it up altogether. Farmer 
Harris, he wanted it for his shepherd, and he 
give me notice. That’s why I come all on a 
sudden like. I says to myself, says I, Laddie’s 
got a home and a welcome for his old mother, 
and it’s only because he thought as I was 
pretty nearly growed to the old place, and 
couldn’t abear to leave it, that he ain’t said as 
I must come and keep house for him long ago. 
But, bless you! I’ve been thinking so of the 
pleasure of seeing you again that I’ve pretty 
nearly forgot as I was leaving my master’s 
grave and all. ’ ’ 

“And when must you go back?” 

“Not till you gets tired of me, Laddie, or till 
you takes me to lay me by the old master ; for 
I’d like to lay there, if so be as you can man- 
age it, for I’ve heard tell as it costs a mort of 
money buryin’ folks out of the parish as they 
dies in, and maybe it mightn’t be just conven- 
ient to you. ” 


LADDIE. 


85 


John Carter busied himself with making the 
fire burn up into a blaze, while his mother 
rambled on, telling him little bits of village 
gossip about people he had long since forgot- 
ten or never heard of; or describing her jour- 
ney, which was a far greater exploit in the old 
woman’s eyes that Lieutenant Cameron’s 
walk across Africa; or dwelling on the delight 
of seeing him again. He paid little heed to 
what she said, pretending to be intent on 
placing a refractory piece of coal in a certain 
position, or coaxing an uncertain little flame 
into steadiness; but his head was busy trying 
to form some plan for getting himself out of 
his difficult position. He did not want to hurt 
her, or to be unkind in any way; but it was 
altogether out of the question having her there 
to live with him. It would ruin all his pros- 
pects in life, his position in his profession and 
in society; as to his engagement, he did not 
venture to allow himself even to think of Vio- 
let just then. He knew some doctors whose 
mothers lived with them, and kept house for 
them, received their guests, and sat at the 
head of their table, but they were ladies, very 
different.. The very idea of his mother with 
three or four servants under her was an ab- 
surdity. And this thought brought Hyder’s 


36 


LADDIE. 


grin before his mind. What had happened 
when his mother arrived? Had she committed 
herself and him frightfully by her behavior? 
No doubt that impudent rascal was giving a 
highly facetious account of it all to the maids 
in the kitchen. Chattering magpies! And 
how they would pass it on! How Mary Jane 
would describe it through the area gate to the 
milk-woman next morning, and cook add a 
pointed word or two from the front steps as 
she cleaned them ! He could almost smell the 
wet hearthstone and hear the clinking of the 
tin milk-pails as Biddy hooked them to the 
yoke and passed on with the story of his 
degradation. And he could fancy what a 
choice morsel it would make for Hyder to tell 
Sir John Meredith’s solemn, red-nosed butler, 
behind his hand, in a hoarse whisper, with 
winks to emphasize strong points, and an 
occasional jerk of the thumb over the shoulder 
and a careful avoidance of names. This 
thought was too much for his feelings, and the 
tongs went down with an ominous clatter into 
the fender, making the old woman jump 
nearly off her chair, and cutting short a story 
about the distemper among Squire Wellow’s 
pigs. 

“There; it brought my heart into my mouth 


LADDIE. 


37 


pretty near, and set me all of a tremble. I 
reckon as I’m a little bit tired and it have shook 
up my nerves like, and a little do terrify 
one so. ” 

The sight of her white, trembling old face 
touched his son’s and doctor’s heart under the 
fine, closely woven, well-cut coat of fine gen- 
tlemanliness and worldly wisdom which he 
was buttoning so closely round him. 

“You are quite tired out, mother,’’ he said; 
“you shall have some tea and go to bed. I 
can’t have you laid up, you know.’’ 

“There now! if I wasn’t thinking as a dish 
of tea would be the nicest thing in the world! 
and for you to think of it ! Ah ! you remem- 
bers what your mother likes, bless you!’’ 

In that moment he had quickly made up his 
mind that at any rate it was too late for that 
night to do anything but just make her com- 
fortable; to-morrow something must be done 
without delay; but there was ten striking, and 
she was evidently quite worn out. He must 
say something to silence those jays of ser- 
vants, and get her off to bed, and then he 
could sit down and arrange his plans quietly ; 
for the suddenness of the emergency had con- 
fused and muddled him. 

“I’ll tell them to get some tea,’’ he said, 


38 


LADDIE. 


“you sit still and rest.” And then he rang 
the bell decidedly and went out into the hall, 
closing the doors behind him. He had never 
felt so self-conscious and uncomfortable as 
when the man-servant came up the kitchen 
stairs and stood as deferentially as ever before 
him. He felt as if he had not got entire con- 
trol of voice, eyes or hands. His eyes seemed 
to avoid looking at the man’s face in spite of 
him, and his voice tried hard to be apologetic 
and entreating of its own accord. That would 
never do. He thrust his obtrusive hand into 
his pockets, and drew up his head, and looked 
sharply at the man straight in the eyes with 
a “fight you for 2d ’’ expression, or “every 
bit as if I owed him a quarter’s rent,” as 
Hyder said afterward, and he spoke in a com- 
manding, bullying tone, very unlike his usual 
courteous behavior to servants, imagining that 
by this he conveyed to the man’s mind that he 
was quite at his ease, and that nothing un- 
usual had happened. 

“Look here,’’ he said, “I want tea at once 
in the dining-room, and tell Cook to send up 
some cold meat. I suppose it’s too late for 
cutlets or anything like that?’’ 

“Is the lady going to stop the night, sir?’’ 

The words stung Dr. Carter so, that he 


LADDIE. 


39 


would have like to have kicked the man down 
the kitchen stairs, but he luckily restrained 
himself. 

“Yes, she is. The best bed-room must be 
got ready, and a fire lighted, and everything 
made as comfortable as possible. Do you 
hear?” 

“Yes, sir.” The man hesitated a second 
to see if there were any further orders, and 
Dr. Carter half turned, looking another way, 
as he added, “She is a very old friend and 
nurse of mine when I was a child, and I want 
her to be made comfortable. She will only 
be here this one night.’’ 

He felt as he turned the handle of the con- 
sulting-room door that he had really done it 
rather well on the whole, and carried it off with 
a high hand, and not told any falsehood after 
all, for was she not his oldest friend and his 
most natural nurse? In reality, he had never 
looked less like a gentleman, and Hyder saw 
it, too. 

They say a man is never a hero to his own 
valet. I do not know if this includes men- 
servants in general but certain it is that, up to 
this time, Dr. Carter had kept the respect of 
his servant. “I know as he ain’t a swell,’’ 
Mr. Hyder would say to the coterie of foot- 


40 


LADDIE. 


men who met in the bar of the snug little 
“public” round the corner “but for all that, 
he ain’t a bad master neither and as far as my 
experience serves, he’s as good a gent as any 
of them, and better any day than them dandy, 
half-pay captings as locks up their wine and 
cigars, and sells their old clothes, and keeps 
their men on scraps, and cusses and swears as 
if they was made of nothing else.” 

But as Hyder went to his pantry that night, 
he shook his head with a face of supreme dis- 
gust. “That’s what I call nasty!” he said: 
“I’m disappointed in that man. I thought bet- 
ter of him than this comes to. Well, well! 
blood tells, after all. What’s bred in the bone 
will come out in the flesh sooner or later. 
Nurse, indeed! Get along! you don’t humbug 
me, my gent!” 

There were no signs, however, of these mor- 
alizings in the pantry, or the fuller discussion 
that followed in the kitchen, when he an- 
nounced that supper was ready. 

“Do ye have your victuals in the kitchen 
now, Laddie?” the old woman said. “Well, 
there! it is the most comfortable to my think- 
ing, though gentle-folks do live in their best 
parlors constant.” 

Hyder discreetly drew back, and Dr. Carter 


LADDIE. 


41 


whispered, with a crimson flush all over his 
face, ‘‘Hush, we’ll have our talk when this fel- 
low is out of the way. Don’t say anything till 
then. ” 

The old woman looked much surprised, but 
at last concluded that there was something 
mysterious against the character of “the very 
civil-spoken young man as opened the door,” 
and so she kept silence while her son led her 
into the dining-room, where tea was spread, 
with what appeared to the old woman royal 
magnificence of white damask and shining sil- 
ver. 

“You can go,” the doctor said. “I will ring 
if we want anything.” 

“He don’t look such a baddish sort of young 
man,” she said, when the door closed behind 
the observant Hyder, “and he seems to mind 
what you says pretty sharp. I thought as he 
was a gent hisself when he opened the door, 
as he hadn’t got red breeches or gaiters or 
nothing; but I suppose you will put him in 
livery by and by?” 

“Now, mother, you must have some tea. 
And you are not to talk till you have eaten 
something. Here! I'll pour out the tea.” For 
the glories of the silver tea-pot were drawing 
her attention from its reviving contents. “I 


42 


LADDIE. 


hope they have made it good. Ah ! I remem- 
ber well what tea you used to make in that lit- 
tle brown tea-pot at home.” It was very easy 
and pleasant to be kind to her, and make much 
of her now, when no one else was there. He 
enjoyed waiting on her, and seeing her bright- 
en up and revive under the combined influence 
of food and warmth and kindness. He liked 
to hear her admire and wonder at everything, 
and he laughed naturally and boyishly at her 
odd little innocent remarks. If they two could 
have been always alone together, with no spy- 
ing eyes and spiteful tongues, it would have 
been all right and pleasant, but as it was, it 
was quite impossible, and out of the question. 

“It ain’t the tea-pot, Laddie, as does it. It’s 
just to let it stand till it’s drawed thorough and 
no longer. Put it on the hob for ten minutes, 
say I, but that’s enough. I don’t like stewed 
tea, and, moreover, it ain’t wholesome neither. 
This is a fine room, Laddie, and no mistake. 
Why, the parson ain’t got one to hold a candle 
to it. I’d just like some of the Sunnybrook 
folks to have a look at it. It would make them 
open their eyes wide, I warrant! — to see me 
a-setting here like a lady, with this here car- 
pet as soft as anything, and them curtains, and 
pictures, and all! I wonder whatever they 


LADDIE. 


43 


would say if they could see? I suppose now, as 
there’s a washus or a place out behind some- 
wheres for them servants?” 

Dr. Carter laughed at the idea of Mrs. 
Treasure, the cook, and the two smart house- 
maids, let alone Mr. Hyder, being consigned 
to a wash-house at the back; and he explained 
the basement arrangements. 

“Underground. Well! I never did! But I 
think I’ve heard tell of underground kitchens 
before, but I never would believe it. It must 
be terrible dark for the poor things, and damp, 
moreover ; and how poor, silly gals is always 
worriting to get places in London, passes me!” 

Presently, when they had done tea, and gone 
back into the consulting-room, when the old 
woman was seated in the arm-chair, with her 
feet on the fender, and her gown turned up 
over her knees, Dr. Carter drew his chair up 
near hers, and prepared for his difficult task. 

“Mother,” he said, laying one of his hands 
caressingly on her arm (he was proud of his 
hands, — it was one of his weaknesses that they 
were gentlemen’s hands, white and well- 
shaped, and there was a plain gold strap-ring 
on the little finger, which hit exactly the right 
medium between severity and display, as a 
gentleman’s ring should), — “Mother, I wish 


44 


LADDIE. 


you had written to tell me you were com- 
ing.” 

She took his hand between both her own, 
hard and horny, with the veins standing up 
like cord on the backs, rough and misshapen 
with years of hard work, but with a world of 
tender mother’s love in every touch, that made 
his words stick in his throat and nearly choke 
him. 

“I knew as you’d be pleased to see me, Lad- 
die, come when I might, or how I might.” 

‘‘Of course, I’m glad to see you, mother, 
very glad ; and I was thinking just before you 
came in that I would run down to Sunnybrook 
to see you just before Christmas.” 

And then he went on to explain how differ- 
ent London life was to that at Sunnybrook, 
and how she would never get used to it or feel 
happy there, talking quickly and wrapping up 
his meaning in so many words and elaborations 
that at the end of half an hour the old woman 
had no more idea of what he meant than she 
had at the beginning, and was fairly mystified. 
She had a strange way, too, of upsetting all 
his skillful arguments with a simple word or 
two. 

‘‘Different from Sunnybrook? Yes, sure; 
but she’d get used to it like other folks. Not 


LADDIE. 


45 


happy? Why, she’d be happy anywheres with 
her Laddie. There, don’t you fret yourself 
about me; as long as you’re comfortable I 
don’t mind nothing.” 

How could he make her understand and see 
the gulf that lay between them, — her life and 
his? It needed much plainer speaking; a 
spade must be called a spade ; and, somehow, 
it looked a very much more ugly spade when 
it was so called. How soon did she catch his 
meaning? He hardly knew, for he could not 
bear to look into her face, and see the smile 
fade from her lips and the brightness from her 
eyes. He only felt her hand suddenly clasp 
his more tightly, as if he had tried to draw it 
away from her ; and she grew silent, while he 
talked on quickly and nervously, telling her 
they would go together to-morrow and find a 
little snug cottage not far from London, with 
everything pretty and comfortable that heart 
could wish for, and a little maid to do the 
work, so that she need never lay her hand to 
anything ; and how he would come to see her 
often, very often, perhaps once a week. Still, 
never a word for or against, of pleasure or 
pain, till he said, — 

“You would like it, mother, wouldn’t you?” 

And then she answered slowly and faintly, 


43 


LADDIE. 


“I’m aweary, Laddie, too tired like for new 
plans; and maybe, dearie, too old.” 

— “You must go to bed,” he said, with a 
burst of overwhelming compunction. “I 
ought not to have let you stop up like this. I 
should have kept what I had to say till to-mor- 
row when you were rested. Come, think no 
more of it to-night, everything will look 
brighter to-morrow. I’ll show you your bed- 
room.” 

And so he took her upstairs, such a lot of 
stairs to the old country legs; but her curiosity 
overcame her fatigue sufficiently to make her 
peep into the double drawing-room where the 
gas-lamp in the street threw weird lights and 
shadows on the ceiling, and touched unexpect- 
edly on parts of mirrors or gilded cornices, giv- 
ing a mysterious effect to the groups of furni- 
ture and the chandelier hanging in its Holland 
covering. 

“ ’Tis mighty fine!” she said, “but an 
unked place to my mind ; like a churchyard 
somat. ’ ’ 

Her bedroom did not look “unked,” how- 
ever, with a bright fire burning, and the invit- 
ing chintz-curtained bed and the crisp muslin- 
covered toilet-table, with two candles lighted. 
In the large looking-glass on the toilet-table 


LADDIE. 


47 


the figure of the little old woman was reflected 
among the elegant comfort of the room, look- 
ing all the more small and shabby and old, 
and out of place in contrast with her surround- 
ings. 

“Now, make haste to bed, there’s a good old 
mother; my room is next to this if you want 
anything, and I shall soon come up to bed. I 
hope you’ll be very comfortable. Good-night. ’’ 

And then he left her with a kiss ; and she 
stood for some minutes quite still, looking at 
the scene reflected in the glass before her, 
peering curiously and attentively at it. 

“And so Laddie is ashamed of his old 
mother,’’ she said softly, with a little sigh; 
“and it ain’t no wonder!’’ 

As Dr. Carter sat down again in his consult- 
ing-room by himself, he told himself that he 
had done wisely, though he had felt and in- 
flicted pain, and still felt very sore and ruffled. 
But it was wisest, and practically kindest and 
best for her in the end, more surely for her 
happiness and comfort ; so there was no need 
to regret it, or for that tiresome little feeling 
in one corner of his heart that seemed almost 
like remorse. This is no story-book world of 
chivalry, romance, and poetry; and to get on in 
it you must just lay aside sentimental fancies 


48 


LADDIE. 


and act by the light of reason and common 
sense. And then he settled down to arrange 
the details of to-morrow’s plans, and jotted 
down on a piece of paper a few memoranda of 
suitable places, times of trains, etc., and re- 
solved that he would spare no pains or expense 
in making her thoroughly comfortable. He 
even wrote a note or two to put off some 
appointments, and felt quite gratified with the 
idea that he was sacrificing something on his 
mother’s account. The clock struck two as he 
rose to go up to bed ; and he went up, feeling 
much more composed and satisfied with him- 
self, having pretty successfully argued and 
reasoned down his troublesome, morbid mis- 
givings. He listened at his mother’s door, 
but all was quiet; and he made haste into bed 
himself, feeling he had gone through a good 
deal that day. He was just turning over to 
sleep, when his door opened softly, and his 
mother came in, — such a queer, funny, old fig- 
ure, with a shawl wrapped round her and a 
very large nightcap on, — one of the old-fash- 
ioned sort, with very broad, flapping frills. 
She had a candle in her hand, and set it down 
on the table by his bed. He jumped up as she 
came in. 


LADDIE. 


49 


“Why, mother, what’s the matter? Not in 
bed? Are you ill?” 

“There, there! lie down; there ain’t nothing* 
wrong. But I’ve been listening for ye this 
long time. ’Tis fifteen year and more since I 
tucked you up 'in bed, and you used to say as 
you never slept so sweet when I didn’t do it.” 

She made him lie down, and smoothed his 
pillow, and brushed his hair off his forehead, 
and tucked the clothes round him, and kissed 
him as she spoke. 

“And I thought as I’d like to do it for you 
once more. Good-night, Laddie, good-night. ” 

And then she went away quickly, and did 
not hear him call, “Mother! O mother!” after 
her; for the carefully tucked-in clothes were 
flung off, and Laddie was out of bed with his 
hand on the handle of the door, and then, — 
second thoughts being cooler, if not better, — 
“She had better sleep,” Dr. Carter said, and 
got back into bed. 

But sleep did not come at his call. He tossed 
about feverishly and restlessly, with his mind 
tossing hither and thither as much as his body, 
the strong wind of his pride and will blowing 
against the running tide of his love and con- 
science, and making a rough sea between 
them, which would not allow of any repose. 

4 Laddie 


ho 


LADDIE. 


And which of them was the strongest? After 
long and fierce debate with himself, he came to 
a conclusion which at all events brought peace 
along with it. “Come what may,” he said, “I 
will keep my mother with me, let people say 
or think what they ,will, — even if it costs me 
Violet herself, as most likely it will. I can’t 
turn my mother out in her old age, so there’s 
an end of it. ’’ And there and then he went to 
sleep. 

It must have been soon after this that he 
woke with a start, with a sound in his ears like 
the shutting of the street door. It was still 
quite dark, night to Londoners, morning to 
country people, who were already going to 
their work and labor; and Dr. Carter turned 
himself over and went to sleep again, saying, 
“It was my fancy or a dream;’’ while his old 
mother stood shivering in the cold November 
morning outside his door, murmuring, — 

“I’ll never be a shame to my boy, my Lad- 
die; God bless him!’’ 


LADDIE. 


51 


CHAPTER IV. 

When Dr. Carter opened his door next morn- 
ing, he found his mother’s room empty, and it 
seemed almost as if the events of the night 
before had been a bad dream ; only the basket 
of apples and the bandbox, still tied up in the 
spotted handkerchief, confirmed his recollec- 
tions; and when he went down, the pattens, 
still on his writing-table, added their testi- 
mony. But where was his mother? All the 
servants could tell him was that they had found 
her bed-room door open when they came down 
in the morning, and the front door unbarred 
and unbolted, and that was all. 

“She has gone back to Sunnybrook,” he said 
to himself, with a very sore heart. “She saw 
what a miserable, base-hearted cur of a son 
she had, who grudged a welcome and a shelter 
to her who would have given her right hand to 
keep my little finger from aching. God for- 
give me for wounding the brave old heart! I 
will go and bring her back. She will be ready 
to forgive me nearly before I speak.” 


52 


LADDIE. 


He looked at the train paper, and found 
there was an early, slow train by which his 
mother must have gone, and an express that 
would start in about an hour, and reach Martel 
only a quarter of an hour after the slower one. 
This just gave him time to make arrange- 
ments for his engagements, and write a line to 
Violet, saying he was unexpectedly called 
away from London, but that he would come to 
her immediately on his return, for he had 
much to tell and explain. The cab was at the 
door to take him to the station, and everything 
was ready, and he was giving his last direc- 
tions to Mr. Hyder. 

“I shall be back to-morrow, Hyder, without 
fail, and I shall bring my mother with me.” 
He brought out the word even now with an 
effort, and hated himself for the flush that 
came up into his face ; but he went on, firmly, 
“That was my mother who was here last 
night, and no man ever had a better.” 

I don’t know how it happened, but every- 
thing seemed topsy-turvy that morning; for all 
at once, Dr. Carter found himself shaking 
hands with Hyder before he knew what he was 
about; and the deferential, polite Hyder, 
whose respect had always been slightly tinged 
with contempt, was saying, with tears in his 


LADDIE. 


53 


eyes, ‘‘Indeed, sir, I see that all along; and I 
don’t think none the worse of you, but a deal 
the better, for saying it out like a man ; and 
me and cook and the gals will do our best to 
make the old lady comfortable, that we will!” 

Dr. Carter felt a strange, dream-like feeling 
as he got into the cab. Every one and every- 
thing seemed changed, and he could not make 
it out; even Hyder seemed something more 
than an excellent servant. It was quite a 
relief to his mind, on his return next day, to 
find Iiyder the same imperturbable person as 
before, and the little episode of hand-shaking 
and expressed sympathy not become a con- 
firmed habit. It was a trifling relief, even in 
the midst of his anxiety and disappointments; 
for he did not find his mother at Sunnybrook, 
nor did she arrive by either of the trains that 
followed the one he came by, though he waited 
the arrival of several at Martel. So he came 
back to London, feeling that he had gone on 
the wrong track, but comforting himself with 
the thought that he would soon be able to trace 
her out, wherever she had gone. But it was 
not so easy as he expected ; the most artful and 
experienced criminal, escaping from justice, 
could not have gone to work more skillfully 
than the old woman did quite unconsciously. 


54 


LADDIE. 


All his inquiries were fruitless; she had not 
been seen or noticed at Paddington, none of 
the houses or shops about had been open or 
astir at that early morning hour. Once he 
thought he had a clew, but it came to nothing; 
and, tired and dispirited, he was obliged, very 
unwillingly, to put the matter into the hands 
of the police, who undertook with great confi- 
dence to find the old woman before another 
day was past. 

It was with a very haggard, anxious face 
that he came into the pretty drawing-room in 
Harley Street, where Violet sprang up from 
her low chair by the fire, to meet him. How 
pretty she was! how sweet! how elegant and 
graceful every movement and look, every 
detail of her dress! His eyes took in every 
beauty lovingly, as one who looks his last on 
something dearer than life, and then lost all 
consciousness of any other beaut) 7 , in the sur- 
passing beauty of the love for him in her eyes. 
She stretched out both her soft hands to him, 
with the ring he had given her, the only orna- 
ment on them, and said, “Tell me about it.” 

Do not you know some voices that have a 
caress in every word and a comfort in every 
tone? Violet Meredith’s was such a voice. 

“I have come for that,” he said; and he 


LADDIE. 


55 


would not trust himself to take those hands in 
his, or to look any longer into her face; but he 
went to the fire and looked into the red caves 
among the glowing coals. “I have come to 
tell you about my mother. I have deceived 
you shamefully.” 

And then he told her of his mother, describ- 
ing her as plainly and carefully as he could, 
trying to set aside everything fanciful or 
picturesque, and yet do justice to the kind, 
simple, old heart, trying to make Violet see the 
great difference between the old countrywoman 
and herself. And then he told her of her hav- 
ing come to him, to end her days under her 
son’s roof. ‘‘I could not ask you to live with 
her,” he ended, sadly. 

She had clasped her hands round his arm 
shyly, for it was only a few days since she had 
to hide away her love, like a stolen treasure, 
out of sight. 

‘‘It is too late to think of that, ” she said, 
with a little coaxing laugh; ‘‘too late, for you 
asked me to be your wife a week ago. Yes, 
John,” — the name came still with a little hesi- 
tation, — ‘‘a whole week ago, and I will not let 
you off. And then I have no mother of my 
own; she died before I can remember; and it 
will be so nice to have one, for she will like me 


56 


LADDIE. 


for your sake, won’t she? And what does it 
matter what she is like, you silly old John? — 
she is your mother, and that is quite enough 
for me. And don’t you think I love you more 
ridiculously than ever because you are so good 
and noble and true to your old mother, and 
are not ashamed of her because she is not just 
exactly like other people?” And she laid her 
soft cheek against his sleeve, by her clasped 
hands, as she spoke. 

But he drew away with almost a shudder. 
“Love me less, then, Violet; hate me, for I 
was ashamed of her ; I was base and cowardly 
and untrue, and I wanted to get her out of the 
way so that no one should know, not even you, 
and I hurt and wounded her, — her who would 
have done anything for her ‘Laddie,’ as she 
calls me, — and she went away disappointed and 
sad and sorry, and I cannot find her.” 

He had sunk down into Violet’s low chair, 
and covered up his face with his hands, and 
through the fingers forced their way the hot, 
burning tears, while he told of his ineffectual 
efforts to find her, and his shame and regret. 

She stood listening, too pitiful and sorry for 
words, longing to comfort him ; and at last she 
knelt down and pulled his hands gently away 
from his face and whispered very softly, as if 


LADDIE. 


57 


he might not like to hear her use his mother’s 
name for him, “We will find her, never fear; 
your mother and mine, Laddie.” And so she 
comforted him. 

What an awful place London is ! I do not 
mean awful in the sense in which the word is 
used by fashionable young ladies, or school- 
boys, by whom it is applied indiscriminately to 
a “lark” or a “bore,” into which two classes 
most events in life may, according to them, be 
divided, and considered equally descriptive of 
sudden death or a new bonnet. I use it in its 
real meaning, full of awe, inspiring fear and 
reverence, as Jacob said, “How dreadful is 
this place,” — this great London, with its mil- 
lions of souls, with its strange contrasts of 
riches and poverty, business and pleasure, 
learning and ignorance, and the sin every- 
where. Awful, indeed ! and the thought would 
be overwhelming in its awfulness if we could 
not say, also, as Jacob did, “Surely the Lord 
is in this place, and I knew it not;” if we did 
not know that there is the ladder set up, reach- 
ing to Heaven, and the angels of God ever 
ascending and descending; if we did not believe 
that the Lord stands above it. It seemed a 
very terrible place to the old countrywoman as 
she wandered about its streets and squares, its 


58 


LADDIE. 


parks and alleys, that November day, too dazed 
and stupefied to form any plan for herself, only 
longing to get out of sight, that she might not 
shame her boy. She felt no bitterness against 
him; for was it not natural when he was a 
gentleman, and she a poor, homely old body? 

In the early morning, when the streets were 
empty, except for policemen or late revelers 
hurrying home, or market-carts coming in 
from the country, with frosty moisture on the 
heaps of cabbages, she got on pretty well. 
She had a cup of coffee at an early coffee-stall, 
and no one took any notice of her ; some of 
those that passed were country people too ; and 
at that early hour people are used to see odd, 
out-of-the-way figures, that would be stared at 
in the height of noon. But as the day went 
on, the streets filled with hurrying people, and 
the shops opened, and omnibuses and cabs 
began to run, and she got into more bustling, 
noisy thoroughfares, and was hustled and 
pushed about and looked at, the terrors of the 
situation came heavily upon her. She tried to 
encourage herself with the thought that before 
long she should get out of London and reach 
the country, little knowing, poor old soul, how 
many miles of streets and houses and pave- 
ments lay between her and the merest pretence 


LADDIE. 


59 


to real country. And then, too, in that maze 
of streets where one seemed exactly like 
another, her course was of a most devious char- 
acter, often describing a circle and bringing 
her back through the same streets without the 
old woman knowing that she was retracing her 
steps; sometimes a difficult crossing, with an 
apparently endless succession of omnibuses and 
carts, turned her from her way; sometimes a 
quieter-looking street, with the trees of a 
square showing at the end, enticed her aside. 
Once she actually went up North Crediton 
Street, unconsciously and unnoticed. She 
reached one of the parks at last, and sat down 
very thankfully on a seat, though it was 
clammy and damp, and the fog was lurking 
under the gaunt, black trees, and hanging over 
the thin, coarse grass, which was being nibbled 
by dirty, desolate sheep, who looked to the old 
woman’s eyes like some new kind of London 
animal, not to be recognized as belonging to 
the same species as the soft, fleecy, white flocks 
on the hillsides and meadows of Sunnybrook. 
She sat here a long time, resting, dozing, and 
trying to think. “I don’t want to trouble no 
one, or shame no one, I only want just to get 
out of the way. ” She was faint and tired, and 
she thought perhaps she might be going to 


60 


LADDIE. 


die. “It’s a bit unked to die alone, and I’d 
liefer have died in my bed comfortable-like ; 
but there! it don’t matter much, it’ll soon be 
all over and an end to it all. * ’ But no ! that 
would not do either ; and the old woman roused 
herself and shook off the faintness. “What- 
ever would folks say if Laddie’s mother was 
found dead like any tramp in the road? He’d 
die of shame, pretty near, to hear it in every 
one’s mouth.’’ Poor old soul! she little knew 
how people can starve, and break their hearts, 
and die for want of food or love in London, 
and no one be the wiser or the sadder. It was 
just then she found out that her pocket had 
been picked, or rather that her purse was gone; 
for she did not wonder where or how it went, 
and, indeed, she did not feel the loss very 
acutety, though, at home in the old days, she 
had turned the house upside-down and hunted 
high and low and spared no pains to find a 
missing halfpenny. It did not contain all her 
money, for with good, old-fashioned caution, 
she had some notes sewed up in her stays; but 
still it was a serious loss, and one she would 
have made a great moan over in old times. 
She did not know that the sight of her worn old 
netted purse, with the rusty steel rings, had 
touched a soft spot in a heart that for years 


LADDIE. 


61 


had seemed too dry and hard for any feeling. 
It had lain in the hand of an expert London 
pickpocket; it was mere child’s-play taking it, 
it did not require any skill. There was a bit 
of lavender stuck into the rings, and he smelt 
and looked at it, and then the old woman turned 
and looked at him with her country eyes; and 
then all at once, almost in spite of himself, he 
held out the purse to her. “Don’t you see as 
you’ve dropped your purse?’’ he said, in a surly, 
angry tone, and finished with an oath that 
made the old woman tremble and turn pale ; 
and he flung away, setting his teeth and calling 
himself a fool. That man was not all bad, — 
who is? — and his poor act of restitution is 
surely put to his credit in the ledger of his life, 
and will stand there when the books shall be 
opened. The old woman got little good from 
it, however, for the purse was soon taken by a 
less scrupulous thief. 

How cold it was! The old woman shivered 
and drew her damp shawl round her, and 
longed, oh, how bitterly, for the old fireside, 
and the settle, worn and polished by genera- 
tions of shoulders; for the arm-chair with its 
patchwork cushioned ; longed, ah, how wearily, 
for the grave by the church-yard wall, where 
the master rests free of all his troubles, and 


62 


LADDIE. 


where “there’s plenty of room for I;” and 
longed, too, quite as simply and pathetically, 
for a cup of tea out of the cracked brown tea- 
pot. But why should I dwell on the feelings 
of a foolish, insignificant old woman? There 
are hundreds and thousands about us whose 
lives are more interesting, whose thoughts are 
more worth recording. * ‘ Are not two sparrows 
sold for a farthing?” and yet, “Doth not God 
take thought for sparrows?” Then, surely, so 
may we. Does he, indeed, despise not the 
desires of such as be sorrowful, — even though 
the sorrowful one be only an old country 
woman, and her desire a cup of tea? Then, 
why should we call that common and uninter- 
esting which He pitifully beholds? And we 
shall find no life that is not full of interest, ten- 
der feeling, noble poetry, deep tragedy, just as 
there is nobody without the elaborate system 
of nerves and muscles and veins with which we 
are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

The early November dusk was coming on 
before she set out on her pilgrimage again, the 
darkness coming on the earlier for the fog and 
the London smoke; and then, hardly caring 
which way she went, she turned her face east- 
ward, not knowing that she was making for 
the very heart of London. The streets were 


LADDIE. 


63 


even more crowded and confusing than they 
had been in the morning ; and the gas and the 
lighted shops, and the noise, and her own 
weariness combined to increase her bewilder- 
ment. 

Once, as she passed round the corner of a 
quieter street, some one ran up again her, and 
nearly threw her down, — a lady, the old woman 
would have described her, smartly, even hand- 
somely, dressed, with a bright color on her 
cheeks, and glowing, restless, unhappy eyes, 
and dry, feverish lips. She spoke a hasty 
word of apology, and then, all at once, gave a 
sharp, sudden cry, and put her hands on the 
old woman’s shoulders, and looked eagerly into 
her face. Then she pushed her away with a 
painful little laugh. “I thought you were my 
mother,” she said. 

“No, I never had no gals.” 

“You’re in luck, then,” the girl said; “thank 
heaven for it. ” 

“Was your mother, maybe, from the coun- 
try?” 

“Yes, she lived in Somersetshire. But I 
don’t even know that she’s alive, and I think 
she must be dead. I hope she is — I hope it!” 
There was something in the girl’s voice that 
told of more bitter despair than her words, and 


64 


LADDIE. 


the old woman put out her hand and laid it on 
the girl’s velvet sleeve. 

“My dear,” she said, “maybe I could help 
you. ’ ’ 

“Help!” was the answer. “I’m past that. 
There, good-night! Don’t trouble your kind 
head about me.” 

And then the old woman went on again, get- 
ting into narrow, darker streets, with fewer 
shops and people of a rougher, poorer class. 
But it would overtax your patience and my 
powers to describe the old woman’s wander- 
ings in the maze of London. Enough to say, 
that when, an hour or two later, footsore and 
ready to drop, she stumbled along a little 
street near Soho Square, a woman, with a baby 
in her arms, uttered a loud cry of pleased 
recognition, and darted out to stop her. 

“Why, it ain’t never you! Whoever would 
have thought of seeing you so soon ; and how- 
ever did you find me out? This is the house. 
Why, there, there! Dontee cry, sure! 
dontee, now! You’re tired out. Come in and 
have a cup of tea. I’ve got the kettle boiling 
all ready for my Harry ’ll be in soon. ” 

It was the young woman she traveled with 
the day before, — only the day before, though 
it seemed months to look back to; only her 


LADDIE. 


65 


face was bright and happy now, in spite of the 
fog and dirt about her; for had not her Harry 
a home and welcome for her, in spite of all her 
fears and people’s evil prophecies: and was 
not this enough to make sunshine through the 
rainiest day? 

Very improbable, you will say, perhaps, that 
these two waifs, these floating straws, should 
have drifted together on the great ocean of 
London life. Yes. very improbable, wellnigh 
impossible. I agree, if it is mere chance that 
guides our way ; but stranger, more improbable 
things happen every day, and, if we mean any- 
thing by Providence, it is no longer difficult to 
understand, for we can see the Hand leading, 
guiding, arranging, weaving the tangled, con- 
fused threads of human life into the grand, 
clear, noble pattern of Divine purpose. 


5 Laddie 


66 


LADDIE. 


CHAPTER V. 

Eighteen months have passed away since my 
story began ; and it is no longer dull, foggy 
November, but May, beautiful even, in Lon- 
don, where the squares and parks are green 
and fresh, and the lilacs and laburnums in 
bloom, and the girls sell lilies-of-the-valley and 
wallflowers in the streets, and trucks with 
double stocks and narcissus “all a-growing and 
a-blowing” pass along, leaving a sweet, reviv- 
ing scent behind them. The sky is blue, with 
great soft masses of cotton- wool cloud; and 
the air is balmy and pure, in spite of smoke 
and dirt; and sweet spring is making his 
power felt, even in the very midst of London. 
It is blossoming time in the heart as well as in 
the Kentish apple-orchards; and the heart can- 
not help feeling gay and singing its happy 
little song even through its cares, like the poor 
lark in the Seven Dial’s bird-shops, ruffling 
their soft breasts and knocking their poor 
brown heads against their cages in their ecstasy 
of song. 

Dr. Carter had good cause for happiness that 


LADDIE. 


67 


day, though, indeed, he was moving among 
sickness and suffering in a great London hos- 
pital. He had some lilies in his coat that 
Violet fastened there with her own hands; and 
as she did so, he had whispered, “Only another 
week, Violet;” for their wedding day was fixed 
in the next week. And was not that a thought 
that suited well with the lovely May weather, 
to make him carry a glad heart under the lilies? 
The wedding had been long delayed from one 
cause and another, but principally because the 
search for the old mother had been altogether 
fruitless, in spite of the confidence of the police. 

“We will find her first,” Violet would say; 
“we must find her, Laddie.” She adopted the 
old name quite naturally. “And then we will 
talk of the wedding.” 

But time rolled on, days, weeks, and months, 
till at last it was more than a year ago that she 
had gone; and though they never gave up the 
hope of finding her, or their efforts to do so, 
still it no longer seemed to stand between them 
and give a reason for putting off the marriage, 
but rather to draw them nearer together, and 
give a reason for marrying at once. But on 
Dr. Carter’s writing-table always stood the pair 
of pattens, much to the surprise of patients; 
but he would not have them moved, and in his 


68 


LADDIE. 


heart lay the pain and regret, side by side with 
his love and happiness. 

The doctors were making their rounds in the 
hospital, with a crowd of medical students 
about them. There was a very interesting case 
in the accident ward, over which much time 
was spent, and much attention paid. I am not 
doctor enough to describe what the nature of 
the case was; and if I were, I dare say you 
would not care to hear; but it was a very inter- 
esting case to the doctors and nurses ; and that 
means that life and death were fighting over 
that bed, and science bringing every reinforce- 
ment in its power in aid of the poor battered 
fortress that the grim king was attacking so 
severely. An easy victory on either one side 
or the other is very uninteresting to lookers-on, 
though of the deepest moment to the patient. 
And so the doctors passed on with hardly a 
word by the two next beds, in one of which life 
was the conqueror, hanging out his flags of 
triumph in a tinge of color on the cheeks, 
brightness in the eyes, and vigor in the limbs ; 
in the other, death was plainly to be seen in 
the still form and white, drawn face. 

After the doctors and students had passed 
by, and finished their round, Dr. Carter came 
back alone to No. 20. He had taken deep 


LADDIE. 


69 


interest in the case, and had something to say 
further about it to the nurse. He was a great 
favorite with the nurses, from his courteous, 
gentle manners; so they were not disposed to 
regard his second visit as a troublesome, fidgety 
intrusion, as they might have done with some. 
He had not been quite pleased with the way 
in which a dresser had placed a bandage, and 
he altered it himself with those strong, tender 
fingers of his, and was just going off better 
satisfied, when he found the flowers had 
dropped from his coat. If they had not been 
Violet’s gift it would not have mattered; but 
he did not like to lose what she had given and 
he looked about for them. They had fallen, 
by some quick movement of his, onto the next 
bed, where death was having an easy victory. 

The old woman’s arms were stretched out- 
side the bed-clothes, and one of her hands, 
hard-worked hands, with the veins standing up 
on the backs like cord, had closed, perhaps 
involuntarily, on the flowers, the lilies and the 
dainty green leaf. 

“Here they are, sir,” said the nurse; “they 
must have dropped as you turned round.” 
And she tried to draw them from the woman’s 
hand, but it only closed the tighter. “She 
doesn’t know a bit what she’s about. Leave 


70 


LADDIE. 


go of the flowers, there’s a good woman,” she 
said, close to her ear; ‘‘the gentleman wants 
them.” 

But the hand still held them. 

“Well, never mind!” Dr. Carter said, with 
just a shade of vexation; “let her keep them. 
It does not matter, and you will only break 
them if you try to get them away.” 

‘‘She’s not been conscious since they brought 
her in,” the nurse said; ‘‘it’s a street accident; 
knocked down by an omnibus. We don’t 
know her name, or nothing, and no one’s been 
to ask about her. ’ ’ 

The doctor still stopped, looking at the lilies 
in the old hand. 

‘‘She is badly hurt,” he said. 

The nurse explained what the house surgeon 
had said: ‘‘Another day will see an end of it. 
I thought she would have died this morning 
when I first came on ; she was restless then, 
and talked a little. I fancy she’s Scotch, for I 
heard her say ‘Laddie’ several times. ” 

The word seemed to catch the otherwise 
unconscious ear, for the old woman turned her 
head on the pillow, and said feebly, “Laddie.” 

And then, all at once the doctor gave a cry 
that startled all the patients in the ward, and 



"‘Mother!’ he cried, ‘Mother, is it you? ’’’—Page 71. 

Laddie. 





LADDIE. 


71 


made many a one lift up her head to see the 
cause of such a cry. 

“Mother!” he cried, “mother, is it you?” 

Dr. Carter was kneeling by the bed, looking 
eagerly, wildly, at the wan white face. Was 
he mad ! The nurse thought he must be, and 
this a sudden frenzy. And then he called 
again,— 

“Mother, mother, speak to me!” 

A childless mother near said afterward she 
thought such a cry would have called her back 
from the dead, and it almost seemed to do so 
in this case, for the closed lids trembled and 
raised themselves a very little, and the drawn 
mouth moved into the ghost of a smile, and 
she said, — 

“Eh, Laddie, here I be.” 

And then the nurse came nearer, to reason 
with the madman. 

“There is some mistake,” she said; “this is 
quite a poor old woman.” 

And then he got up and looked at her, she 
said afterward, “like my lord duke, as proud 
as anything.” 

“Yes,” he said, “and she is my mother. I 
will make arrangements at once for her removal 
to my house if she can bear it.” 

Ah ! that was the question, and it wanted 


72 


LADDIE. 


little examination or experience to tell that the 
old woman was past moving. The nurse, 
bewildered and still incredulous, persuaded him 
not to attempt it ; and, instead, her bed was 
moved into a small ward off the large one, 
where she could be left alone. 

Love is stronger than death ; many waters 
cannot drown it. Yes, but it cannot turn back 
those cold waters of death, when the soul has 
once entered them ; and so Dr. Carter found 
that with all his love and with all his skill, he 
could only smooth, and that but a very little, 
the steep stony road down into Jordan. 

He got a nurse to attend specially upon her, 
but he would not leave her; and the nurse said 
it was not much good her being there, for he 
smoothed her pillows, and raised her head, and 
damped her lips, and fanned her with untiring 
patience and tenderness. Once when he had 
his arm under hei head, raising it, she opened 
her eyes wide, and looked at him. 

“Ah, Laddie,” she said, “I’m a bit tired with 
my journey. It’s a longish way from Sunny- 
brook.” 

“Did you come from there?” 

“Yes, sure, I’ve never been such a long way 
before, and I’m tired out.*’ 



“ 1 I must have a good look at you. Page o2. 

Laddie. 



















LADDIE. 


73 


“Why didn’t you write?” he asked presently, 
when she opened her eyes again. 

“I wanted to give you a surprise,” she said; 
“and I knew as you’d be glad to see me at any 
time as I liked to come.” 

And then it dawned on him that the past 
eighteen months had been blotted clean out of 
her memory, and that she thought she had 
just arrived. Then she dozed, and then again 
spoke, “And so this is your house, Laddie? 
And mighty fine it be!” looking round on the 
bare hospital room; “and I’m that comfortable 
if I wasn’t so tired, but I’ll be getting up when 
I’m rested a bit. But it do me good to see 
you when I opens my eyes. I’ve been think- 
ing all the way how pleased you’d be. ” All 
this she said a word or two at a time, and very 
low and weakly, so that only a son’s ear could 
have heard. 

As the evening came on, she fell asleep very 
quietly, such a sleep as, if hope had been pos- 
sible, might have given hope. Dr. Carter left 
the nurse watching her and went away, got a 
hansom and offered the man double fare to 
take him to Harley Street as fast as possible. 
Violet had just come in from a flower show, 
and looked a flower herself, with her sweet 
face and dainty dress. 


LADDIE. 


“I have found her," Laddie said. “Come.” 
And she came without asking a question, only 
knowing from Laddie’s face that there was 
sorrow as well as joy in the finding. 

“She is dying,” he said, as they went up the 
hospital stairs together. “Can you bear it?” 

She only answered by a pressure of her hand 
on his arm, and they went on to the quiet 
room. There was a shaded light burning, and 
the nurse sitting by the bedside. 

“She has not stirred, sir, since you left.” 

But even as she spoke, the old woman moved 
and opened her eyes, looking first at Laddie 
and then on Violet. 

“Who is it?” she asked. 

And then Violet knelt down with her sweet 
face close to the old woman’s, and said very 
softly, “Mother, I am Laddie’s sweetheart. ” 

“Laddie’s sweetheart,” she echoed; “he’s 
over-young to be wed — but there! I forgot. 
He’s been a good son, my dear, always good 
to his old mother, and he’ll be a good husband. 
And you’ll make him a good wife, my dear, 
won’t you? God bless you. ” 

And then her trembling hand was feeling for 
something, and Laddie guessed her wish, and 
put his own hand and Violet’s into it; two 
young hands, full of life and health and pulsa- 


LADDIE. 


75 


tion, under the old worn, hard- worked hand, 
growing cold and weak with death. 

“God bless you, dears, Laddie and his sweet- 
heart. But I'm a bit tired just now. ” 

And then she dozed again, and the two sat 
by in the dim, quiet room, drawn closer 
together and dearer to each other than they 
ever had been before, in the presence of the 
Great Angel of Death, who was so near the 
old mother now. And very tenderly he did 
his work that night! Only a sigh and then a 
sudden hush, during which the listeners’ 
pulses throbbed in their ears, as they listened 
for the next long-drawn, painful, difficult 
breath that did not come ; and then the weary 
limbs relaxed into the utter repose and still- 
ness of rest after labor, for the night had come 
when no man can work, — the holy starlit night 
of death, with the silver streaks of the great 
dawn of the Resurrection shining in the 
east. 

For a moment they sat spell-bound ; and then 
it was Laddie, he who had so often seen death 
face to face, who gave way, throwing himself 
on the bed with an exceeding bitter cry, “O 
mother, mother, say you forgive me!” 

What need for words? Did he not know 
that she forgave him? If, indeed, she knew 


76 


LADDIE. 


that she had anything to forgive. But she was 
“a bit tired.” 

Don’t you know when bedtime comes, and 
the nurse calls the children, how sometimes 
they leave their toys, which a few minutes 
before seemed all in all to them, without a 
look, and the cake unfinished, and are carried 
off with their heads bent down, and their eyes 
heavy with sleep, too tired even to say good- 
night, or speak a pretty, lisping word of the 
play-time past, or the pleasures coming in the 
morning? And so it is often with us bigger 
children; when the nurse, Death, calls us at 
our bedtime, we are ‘‘a bit tired,” and glad to 
go, too sleepy even for thought or farewell. 

They laid her by the old master in Sunny- 
brook churchyard ; and the village folks talked 
long afterward of the funeral, and how Dr. 
Carter ‘‘he as used to be called Laddie,” fol- 
lowed her to the grave, “along with the pretty 
young lady as he was going to marry ; and, 
bless my heart! wouldn’t the poor old soul 
have felt proud if she could have seen ’em? 
But she’s better where she is, where there ain’t 
no buryin’ and no pride neither.” 


£Lve.\^n MYu^aXe'f 


MISS TOOSEY’S 
MISSION 


BY 

THE AUTHOR O P 

LADDIE 


CHICAGO 

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 























































MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


CHAPTER I. 

Miss Toosey always wore a black silk dress 
on Sunday, and went three times to church. 
Morning, afternoon, and evening, as soon as 
the bell clanged at the quarter, that black silk 
dress came out of Miss Toosey 's little house 
in North Street, turned the corner into High 
Street, crossed the Market-place, passed under 
the archway into the churchyard, in at the west 
door, and up the middle aisle, past the free 
seats, which occupy the lower end of Martel 
church, and stopped at the second pew on the 
left-hand side, one sitting in which has been 
rented by Miss Toosey for many years. This 
pew is immediately in front of the church- 
wardens' seat, where those two dignitaries sit 
majestically, with a long rod placed conveni- 
ently on either hand, ready to be seized at a 
moment’s notice, to execute judgment on 
youthful offenders in the free seats, though 
the well-known fact that generations of paint 
and varnish have made them fixtures some- 
3 


4 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


what takes' off from the respect and awe felt 
for them. Miss Toosey is short, and the pew- 
door has a tendency to stick ; and when you 
have a Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book, spec- 
tacle case, and umbrella in your hands, you 
cannot enter into a struggle on equal terms; 
and so when Mr. Churchwarden Wyatt hap- 
pens to be in church in time, he leans over and 
opens the pew-door for Miss Toosey, “and 
very kind of him, too, a most gentlemanly 
man Mr. Wyatt is, my dear.” 

The black silk was quite a part of Sunday in 
Miss Toosey’s mind, and, therefore, holy, to a 
certain extent; she would have considered it 
disrespectful to the day to put on any other 
dress, and no stress of weather could prevent 
her wearing it ; indeed, she thought it decid- 
edly a want of trust in Providence to fear that 
heavy rain or deep snow might injure it. She 
would pin up the skirt inside-out round her 
waist, with a reckless disregard of appear- 
ances, so that you could hardly guess she had 
any dress on at all under her shawl ; but noth- 
ing would have induced her to put on another. 
Of late years, too, she had not felt it quite 
right to wear it on week-days when she was 
asked out to tea; it seemed to her inappropri- 
ate, like reading a regular Sunday book on 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


5 


week-days, which has something profane about 
it. It had been through many vicissitudes; 
not even Miss Toosey herself could accurately 
recall what it was in its original form; and 
the first distinct incident in its existence was 
the black crape with which it was trimmed, in 
respect to the memory of Miss Toosey’s father, 
— old Toosey, the parish doctor. This was fif- 
teen years ago ; and since then it had been un- 
picked and re-made several times, turned, 
sponged, dipped, French-chalked, cleaned, 
trimmed and altered, till it would have re- 
quired vast ingenuity to do anything fresh to 
it. 

As the black silk was part of Sunday to Miss 
Toosey, so was Miss Toosey part of Sunday to 
many of the Martel people. The Miss Purts, 
the draper's daughters, in the Market-place, 
knew that it was time to put on their smart 
bonnets (the latest Paris fashion), when they 
saw Miss Toosey pass the window, so as to in- 
sure their clattering into church on their high 
heels, tossing and giggling, not later than the 
Venite. 

Old Budd, the clerk, with his white beard 
and wooden leg, always said, “Good-morning, 
Miss Toosey; fine day, mum,” as he stumped 
past her pew-door on his way to the vestry, 

0 Laddie 


6 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


which made her feel rather uncomfortable, as 
he said it out loud, and it did not seem quite 
right ; but then Mr. Budd is such a good man, 
and, being a church official, no doubt he has a 
right to> behave just as he pleases. Even Mr. 
Dodson, the late curate, after baptizing fifteen 
pugnacious babies, all crying lustily, said, as 
he passed Miss Toosey on his way back to the 
reading-desk, wiping the beads of perspiration 
from his good-natured red face, “\7arm work, 
Miss Toosey.” 

I think that both Mr. Peters the rector, and 
Mr. Glover the curate, would quite have lost 
their places in the service if Miss Toosey’s 
seat had been empty, as they neither of them 
could have preached with comfort without the 
fat, red-velvet cushion with the tassels, on 
which they laid their books. 

I do not think it ever occurred to Miss Too- 
sey that there was anything amiss in Martel 
church or its services. She was proud of the 
fine, old gray-stone tower, which had been 
built when men gave willingly of their best for 
the service of God, and so built “for glory and 
for beauty,” and she loved the roof of the 
nave, which was rich in oak carving, bleached 
white by time, with angels and emblems of 
wonderful variety and ingenuity. And all the 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


7 


rest of the church she took for granted, and she 
did not wonder at the narrow, uncomfortable 
pews, where, as Mr. Malone, the Irish curate, 
said, “it was quite impossible to kneel down, 
and very difficult to get up again;’’ or at the 
free seats, put behind all the others; or at the 
large, steep galleries; or at the high pulpit, rich 
in red velvet and dusty fringe, on one side, and 
the reading desk to match on the other, with 
the clerk’s desk underneath, where Mr. Budd 
did his part of the service, i. e., the responses, 
as a clerk should do, in a strident, penetrating 
voice, and took a well-earned nap in the ser- 
mon when his duties were discharged. It did 
not strike her as curious that the seats in the 
chancel should be occupied by the Peters fam- 
ily on one side and by the Rossiters on the 
other, while the ladies and gentlemen of the 
choir displayed their smart bonnets or Sunday 
waistcoats to great advantage in front of the 
organ, where, in return for their vocal exer- 
tions, they were privileged to behave as badly 
as their fancies led them. You see, Miss 
Toosey was not critical, and she had not been 
to any other church for many years, and cus- 
tom draws a soft curtain over imperfections, 
and reverence is not quick to see irreverence 
in others, and prayer fills the air with clouds 


8 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


of incense, through which we cannot easily see 
bonnets, but only Heaven itself ; and as Miss 
Toosey knelt, being very short, you remem- 
ber, and the pews high, she could only with 
her outward eyes see the angels in the roof and 
her prayer-book. And it was just the same 
with the sermon; as church was church to 
Miss Toosey, so a sermon was a sermon. 
Whether it was Mr. Peters, Mr. Glover, or Mr. 
Malone, Miss Toosey looked out the text in her 
little brown Bible, and put the bookmarker, 
with “Love the Jews,” into the place, and gave 
her head a little nod, as if to show that the text 
was there, and no mistake about it ; and then 
took off her spectacles, wiped them, put them 
into a case, gave her black silk skirt a slight 
shake to prevent creases, and then settled 
down to listen. I will not undertake to say 
that Miss Toosey entered into all of the subtle- 
ties of doctrine set forth over the red velvet 
pulpit-cushion; I will not even deny that 
sometimes the lavender ribbons on Miss Too- 
sey’s bonnet nodded, without much connection 
with the arguments of the discourse, and that 
the words “election and grace” grew faint and 
dreamy in her ears, and Mr. Peters’ gray hair 
or Mr. Glover’s whiskers disappeared from her 
sight. I am disposed to think that she did not 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


9 


lose very much ; but Miss Toosey took it much 
to heart, so much so that she could hardly 
believe herself capable of it, and even con- 
tended that she was listening all the time, 
though she closed her eyes to pay greater at- 
tention. But sometimes the sermons kept 
Miss Toosey awake effectually, and made her 
feel very uncomfortable for some days after- 
ward; and this was when they were on the 
subject of conversion. Mr. Malone was espe- 
cially strong on this point ; and, after one of 
his powerful discourses, Miss Toosey would 
have a wakeful night, going through the course 
of her peaceful, uneventful life, trying to find 
that moment of awakening which other Chris- 
tians seemed to find so easily, wondering if she 
might date her conversion from a day when 
she was a little child, crying and being com- 
forted at her mother’s knee; or in the quiet, 
sober joy of her Confirmation; or when she 
followed her mother up the aisle one Easter 
Day, in trembling awe to her first Communion ; 
or in the days of her simple, girlish romance 
long ago, when her heart was overflowing with 
pure happiness ; or to the days following so 
quickly when it came to an untimely end, and 
she sobbed herself to sleep, night after night, 
with her cheek (it was round and smooth then) 


10 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


pressed to that same little brown Bible, with 
some faded flowers between the leaves; or 
could it have been when her father died and 
she stood alone by his grave? None of these 
events seemed quite to answer to Mr. Malone’s 
descriptions, and sometimes Miss Toosey was 
driven to fear that she must rank herself with 
the unconverted, to whom a few scathing 
words were addressed at the conclusion of the 
sermon. 

On one occasion there was a revival at Mar- 
tel, and meetings were held at the school- 
room, one of which Miss Toosey attended. 
There was much heat, and hymn-singing, and 
excitement; and Miss Toosey was agitated, 
and hysterical, and impressed ; but when the 
presiding clergyman, in an impassioned man- 
ner, invited all those who were conscious of 
conversion to remain, and the rest to leave, 
Miss Toosey, without a moment’s hesitation, 
went out and found her way home, sobbing 
and broken-hearted. 

Then, too, the doctrine of assurance troub- 
led her sorely, feeling (as she did) sure only 
of her own weakness and God’s great mercy. 
And so she grew very nervous and uncomfort- 
able when people began to talk of their relig- 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


11 


ious experiences, which seemed so much more 
satisfactory than her own. 

You must not, however, suppose that Miss 
Toosey was at all High Church; on the con- 
trary, she had a horror of Puseyites and of the 
opinions which she fondly imagined them to 
hold; such, for example, as works being the 
only means of salvation, without the faintest 
mixture of faith, which, as Miss Toosey said, 
is so directly opposite to the teaching of the 
Bible. She also spoke of the danger of the 
4 ‘multiplication of ordinances, ” a well-sound- 
ing sentence which Mr. Glover was rather fond 
of, and Miss Toosey always gave a little tri- 
umphant sniff after saying it, for it is not every 
one who can make use of abstruse, theological 
expressions of many syllables. It is true that 
she went to church herself whenever there was 
an opportunity, and would have done so if Mr. 
Peters had largely increased the services, but 
that, of course, was different. She also re- 
garded with suspicion the efforts of some of the 
young ladies of the parish who had “high” 
tendencies, to introduce crosses surreptitiously 
into the decorations at Christmas, cunningly 
disguised with evergreens, and of odd and or- 
namental shapes. She was firmly persuaded 
that the emblem of our faith had something 


12 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


Romish about it, and that it was safer to keep 
to circles and anchors and triangles; indeed, 
she distrusted the decoration excitement 
among the young ladies altogether, and looked 
back with regret to the days when the pew- 
opener used to put up sprigs of holly in the 
windows, and fasten bushes of the same to the 
lamps in the chancel. 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


13 


CHAPTER II. 

Now I must tell you about Miss Toosey’s 
Mission, and I think it will surprise you to 
hear that her Mission was the conversion of the 
heathen, not the heathen at Martel, though 
there were enough and to spare, even in that 
favored spot; not the heathen in London, or 
our great towns even ; but the heathen in for- 
eign parts, real bona fide black heathen, with 
war-paint and feathers, and strings of beads, 
and all the rest of it. Her mission began iu 
this manner: A missionary Bishop came to 
preach at Martel. I do not know quite how it 
happened, as he certainly did not pronounce 
“Shibboleth” with the same distinct and unc- 
tuous intonation which was deemed essential 
at Martel; but I have been told that he met 
Mr. Peters out at dinner, and that the rector, 
always good-natured, offered his pulpit, red- 
velvet cushion and all, for the Bishop’s use on 
the following Sunday evening. 

The Bishop gladly accepted the offer. He 
was not quick to see microscopic differences of 
opinion; the cut of a coat, a posture, or the 


24 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


use of a cant word, did not seem to him of such 
vital importance as he found attached to them 
among Churchmen at home; and he was fairly 
puzzled at the hot blood and animosity that 
arose from them, bidding fair even at times to 
rend the woven garment without seam. He 
had been used to a clearer, simpler atmosphere, 
a larger horizon, a wider span of heaven over- 
head, than we can get in our streets and lanes, 
making it easier, perhaps, to look up stead- 
fastly, as those should, whose lives are ever 
teaching them how far, how terribly “far, the 
Heaven is from the earth,” where the earth 
lies in darkness and idolatry. To one who 
was used to the difference between Christians 
and heathen, the differences between Church- 
man and Churchman seemed unutterably 
small; so that he was fain to say with Abra- 
ham, “Let there be no strife between us, I 
pray, for we are brethren. ’ ’ 

He had come home with his heart burning 
within him with the urgency of the work he 
left behind, confident that he could not fail to 
find help and sympathy in happy, rich Christian 
England; in his waking thoughts, as well as 
in his dreams, there always stood by him a 
man of Macedonia, the Macedonia of his far- 
off labors, saying, “Come over and help us;” 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


15 


and he found that the love of many had waxed 
cold, and that indifference and scarcely con- 
cealed weariness received him wherever he 
went. 

So he was glad to accept Mr. Peter’s 
invitation, and though Mr. Malone looked 
rather sourly at him in the vestry, and even 
the rector was not quite so cordial to him as he 
had been at the dinner party, still he scaled 
the heights of the pulpit with alacrity, to the 
enlivening strains of “From Greenland’s Icy 
Mountains,’’ which not even the “Mitre Hymn 
book,’’ and the Martel choir can rob of its 
charms. 

The text which Miss Toosey found out in 
her little brown Bible was from St. John, the 
6th chapter and 9th verse: “There is a lad 
here with five barley loaves and two small 
fishes; but what are they among so many?” 
The Bishop began by describing the scene 
where the miracle occurred, — the barren hill- 
side ; the blue sea of Galilee ; the towns in the 
distance, with their white, flat-roofed houses, 
nestling in the green valleys like “a handful 
of pearls in a goblet of emerald;’’ the sun 
setting behind the purple Galilean hills, and 
the soft evening light touching the mountain- 
tops with gold, and casting long shadows on 


16 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


the quiet sea, where the fishing-boats were 
going forth to their nightly work. And then 
he told of the weary, footsore crowd, gathered 
on the slope of the hill, far from home, and 
hungry and fainting, — women and little chil- 
dren, as well as men, — many of whom had 
come from far-away Capernaum and Caesarea, 
skirting the north side of the lake for many a 
weary mile, on foot, to meet the ship that bore 
our Lord across the sea. 

Whence can they buy bread in this wilder- 
ness? But among that helpless crowd there is 
one foot-sore and weary and fasting like them, 
yet Who is the Creator Himself. “He Who 
maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains, 
and herb for the use of man,” Who “feedeth 
the young ravens,” and Who “filleth the hun- 
gry soul with good things;” and He is looking 
with infinite compassion on their want; and 
He says to His disciples, “Give ye them to 
eat.” And then abruptly, the Bishop turned 
from the story of the miracle to his own work, 
and he told of the great extent of mountain, 
forest, and plain, of the great mighty rivers, of 
the rich and fertile land, and the luxuriant 
beauty all around, fair as the promised land of 
which Moses said, “The eyes of the Lord thy 
God are always upon it from the beginning of 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


17 


the year even unto the end of the year.” But 
the people of this fair land are, like the weary 
crown on the hillside far from home — ah ! how 
\ far from Heaven, with the deep, deep sea of 
ignorance rolling between; they are hungry, 
sinking for the want of the Bread of Life ; but 
civilization and knowledge and light are far 
away from them across the ocean, and “how 
can we satisfy these men with bread here in 
the wilderness?” It is evening, too; surely 
the sun of this world is getting near its setting, 
and casting long shadows, if we would but see 
them. Shall we send these poor souls away 
fasting? — these women and little children? 
Will they not faint by the way? How can they 
hope to reach their Heavenly home without 
the Bread of Life? 

But the Lord is looking on them with the 
same infinite compassion, and he is saying to 
me and to you, “Give ye them to eat.” Is 
there not here this evening, among you Martel 
people, a lad with five barley loaves and two 
small fishes for the Lord’s use?" It seemed so 
little to the disciples, scarcely worthy of men- 
tion. “What are they among so many?” 
Merely enough for two or three, and here are 
five thousand and more. But the Lord said, 
“B, ing them hither to Me. ” He had no need 


18 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


of them. He could have commanded the 
stones to be made bread; He could have called 
manna down from Heaven; He could have 
satisfied them with a word ; but he was gra- 
ciously pleased to take that poor and humble 
little store in His all-powerful hand ; and it 
was sufficient : the people were filled, they had 
as much as they would, and there were yet 
fragments that remained. Never think of tlie 
smallness, the poorness of the instrument, 
when it is the Master’s hand that uses it, — He 
who made this lovely world out of chnos, and 
formed the glorious light out of utter darkness. 
Do not be kept back by false humility, by 
thinking too much of the insignificance and 
worthlessness of the gift. Give your best, — 
give your all. “Bring them hither to Me,” 
saith the Lord. What have you to give? Turn 
over your store, — yourself, that is best of all, 
most worthy offering, poor though it may be — 
your money, your time, your influence, your 
prayers. Who so poor but what he has one or 
more of these barley-loaves of daily life to 
offer to Him Who gave us all? I am not here 
to beg and entreat for your money, though to 
our dim sight it seems sorely needed just now 
when, from village after village, the cry comes 
to me for teachers and for light, and I have 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


19 


no men or means to send them; and worse 
still is the silence of those who are in such utter 
darkness: they do not know their own need. 
But still we know and believe it is the Lord’s 
work, and it will be done. It may not be me 
or you, but in His own good time it will be 
done. He does not need your money; He only 
offers you the glorious privilege of being fel- 
low-workers with Him. Yours is the loss if 
you do not heed; the work will not suffer; 
only you will have had no share; only you 
may not have another opportunity given you ; 
only the time may come when it will be said to 
you “For as much as ye did it not to these” 
(who are indeed poor, and sick, and in prison), 
“ye did it not to Me.” 

It was not by any means what the almhouse 
men called “a powerful discarse;” the old 
men belonging to Frowdes’ charity, in their 
snuff-colored coats, each with a large F on the 
left shoulder, clustering round the north door 
after service, shook their heads in disapproval. 

“He don’t wrusstle with ’un,” said old 
Jacobs; “he ain’t fit to hold a candle to old 
Thwackum, down at Ebenezer. Why I have 
seen him punish that there pulpit cushion till 
the dust came out like anything, and he had to 
take off his neckcloth, it were that wet; that’s 


20 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


what I call preaching now, to think of the likes 
of this 'un being a Bishop. ’ * 

Miss Baker, too, of the firm oE Silver & 
Baker, drapers in High Street, expressed her 
opinion in a high key, tinder an umbrella, as 
she went home along Church-lane, “that he 
did not preach the gospel;’’ but then she was 
very particular, and the Apostle Paul himself 
would scarcely have come up to her standard 
of “Gospel” sermons. 

There was not a very good collection, either. 
You see it was partly from its being a wet 
evening, so that the congregation was alto- 
gether small ; and it had not been given out on 
the preceding Sunday ; and no bills had been 
printed and posted on the church-doors and 
principal public-houses in the town, as was 
always done in the case of sermons in aid of 
the Irish Church Mission or the Jews’ Society. 
So people had not been attracted by the 
announcement of a real live Bishop ; and those 
who came had not had time to get small 
change ; and so at the end of the sermon, with 
the best intentions and a natural dislike to pass 
the basket without giving something, they 
found themselves devoid of the necessary 
threepenny-bits and sixpences. So, when Mr. 
Mackenzie, the tall lawyer, who always held 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


21 


the basket lined with green baize at the north 
door, emptied its contents on the vestry table, 
and the other baskets added their quota, there 
was but a poor show; and Mr. Peters, kind 
man, when Mr. Malone was not looking, 
slipped a sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket 
to add to the heap more for the honor of Mar- 
tel than from interest in the Mission ; and he 
explained that unfortunately some of his best 
people were not at church, and that they had 
had a collection so very recently, and that he 
hoped the next time the Bishop was in those 
parts — but here a warning glance from Mr. 
Malone cut him short, and he did not commit 
himself further. 

What a fortunate thing it was that Mr. 
Peters had a curate of such high principle ! 

“Who was that old woman sitting in front 
of Wyatt?” John Rossitter asked his mother, 
when the brougham door was closed and they 
were going down High Street slowly with the 
drag on, for it was very steep, with a blurred 
view of lights and moving umbrellas through 
the rainy windows. 

“My dear John, do you suppose I know 
every old woman in Martel?” 

“No, but I thought you might have noticed 
her ; her face was a sight to see in the ser- 
mon. ” 

7 Laddie 


22 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


“Well, John,” Mrs. Rossiter answered rather 
fretfully, feeling conscious of a temporary 
oblivion on her own part in the middle of the 
sermon, “it was no wonder if any one went to 
sleep; the church was so hot; I felt quite faint 
myself. ” 

And she felt whether her bonnet had got 
pushed on one side, and hope she had not wak- 
ened with a snore. 

John laughed: “I don’t mean a sight to see 
that way, mother; that’s not so very unusual 
at Martel; but it was her absorbed interest 
that struck me as something out of the way.” 

“It must have been one of the young women 
at Purts. ’ ’ 

“My dear mother, don’t insult those elegant 
creatures by supposing that they would put on 
anything half so respectable as my old woman’s 
bonnet; they would rather die first.” 

“Then I don’t know who it could have been, 
unless it was Miss Toosey — lavender ribbons 
and hair done in a little curl on each side? 
Ah ! then it is. Her father was old Toosey, 
the doctor; he was parish doctor when we first 
came to Brooklands, and she was a pretty 
young girl, in a green spencer; and your 
father used to say — ” 

and here followed reminiscences unconnected 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


23 


with Miss Toosey’s Mission, which I need not 
chronicle. 

Mrs. Rossitter lived two miles from Martel, 
at Brooklands, and she attended church reg- 
ularly twice on Sunday, “because it is a duty 
to set a right example to the lower orders. ’ ' 
So the lower orders around Brooklands — 
mostly, as far as the men were concerned, 
smoking their pipes in their shirt sleeves, 
hanging over a pigsty, or nursing their babies ; 
mostly as far as the women were concerned, 
waxing fierce in preparations for dinner, or 
gossiping with their next-door neighbors — 
saw the Brooklands brougham pass four times 
on Sunday; and the children ran after and 
shouted “Whip behind!” and the babies were 
possessed with suicidal interest in the horses’ 
feet, and toddled, or crawled, or rolled into 
imminent danger, according to their age or 
walking capacities. 

When John Rossitter was down from Lon- 
don, he went with his mother; and when he 
was not, she went alone, because Humphrey 
altogether declined to go. 

“It was more than any fellow could stand,” 
he said, gnawing his yellow mustache, and 
looking down at his mother with those hand- 
some, idle gray eyes of his, which were the 


24 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


most convincing of arguments, before which 
all her excellent reasons for attending church 
—such as “what people would say,” and “how 
it would look,” and “what a bad example it 
would set,” if he did not go — crumbled to 
ashes. She found John more amenable; but 
I do not on this account credit John with any 
great superiority to Humphrey, only that he 
had greater powers of endurance, and was not 
so sure as Humphrey that the very surest way 
to please his mother was to please himself. 
Then, too, Sunday mornings at Brooklands 
were apt to hang heavy on his hands, for he 
had not the resources of Humphrey. He could 
not spend an hour or two in contented con- 
templation of a family of fox-terrier puppies; 
he found that “the points” of the very clev- 
erest little mare in creation palled after five 
minutes’ serious consideration, and that the 
conversation of grooms and stablemen still 
left a good deal to be desired in the way of 
entertainment; in fact, he had none of the 
elevated and refined tastes of an English 
country gentleman; so John Rossitter went to 
church with his mother, and endured, with 
equal stoicism, sermons from Mr. Peters, Mr. 
Glover, or Mr. Malone. He did not yawn in 
the undisguised manner of Dr. Gardener Jones 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


25 


opposite, who let every one see what a fine 
set of teeth he had, and healthy red tongue, 
at short intervals ; he did not go to sleep and 
snore like old Mrs. Robins, and one or two 
more; but when the regulation half-hour was 
over, his eyebrows would rise and the calm 
inattention of his face become ruffled, and his 
hand move quietly to his waistcoat-pocket and 
his watch appear, an action which Mr. Glover 
felt acutely in every fiber, though his back 
was turned to John Rossi tter, and he would 
grow red to the very finger-tips, and his 
“finally,” “lastly,” and “in conclusion,” 
would get sadly muddled in his nervous efforts 
to make short cuts to the end. So strong had 
this habit of inattention become, that it would 
have required something much more striking 
than our missionary Bishop to startle him out 
of it ; and it was only the sight of Miss Toosey’s 
face that brought back his thoughts from their 
wanderings, to Martel church and its sleepy 
congregation, and the Bishop’s voice from the 
high pulpit. He could see her through a vista 
of heads between Mr. Cooper’s bald head and 
Miss Purts’ feathers and pink rosebuds; now 
and then the view was cut off by Mrs. Robins 
giving a convulsive nod, or one of the little 


26 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


Miss Cooper’s fidgeting up a broad-brimmed 
hat. 

“Was the sermon so eloquent?” John Rossit- 
ter wondered. Certainly that listening, rapt 
face was, — quite a common, little, wizen, old 
maidish face, with nothing intellectual or 
noble about it, and yet transfigured into some- 
thing like beauty with the brightness of a re- 
flected light. Don’t you know how sometimes 
a scrap of broken glass on a dust heap will 
catch the sunlight and shine with quite a daz- 
zling brilliancy, and how a little smutty rain- 
drop in a London court will holy the sun and 
a gleaming changing rainbow in its little 
mirror? 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


27 


CHAPTER III. 

“Where does Miss Toosey live?” said John 
Rossitter, on Monday morning; “I think I 
may as well go and call on her, as I have 
nothing else to do.” 

I do not know what impelled him to go. It 
is impossible to define motives accurately, 
even our own. We cannot say sometimes why 
we do a thing; every reason may be against 
it, — common sense, habit, inclination, expe- 
rience, duty, all may be pulling the other way, 
and yet we tear ourselves loose, and do the 
thing, urged by some invisible motive of whose 
existence we are hardly conscious. And if it 
is so in ourselves, how much more difficult to 
dissect other people’s motives! and it is gen- 
erally safer to leave the cause alone altogether, 
and only regard the effects produced. So it 
is enough to say that, on that Monday morn- 
ing, Miss Toosey heard the rattle of wheels 
along North Street, and, looking out, saw the 
Rossitter’s dog-cart and high-stepping chest- 
nut mare, which, to her extreme surprise, 
stopped in front of her door. 


28 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


“Something wrong with the harness, ” she 
concluded, as the little groom flew out, and 
stood at the horse’s head, with his arms 
crossed. 

“Bless the child!’’ Miss Toosey said, “as if 
the creature could not have swallowed him at 
a mouthful, top-boots and all!’’ 

Bat her observation of the groom from the 
bed-room window was interrupted by a loud 
knock at the door, and before she had time to 
tie her cap- strings, or put a pin in the back 
of her collar, Betty came rushing up, out of 
breath and red-faced, with a card held in the 
corner of her apron, bearing the name “Mr. 
John Rossitter. ” 

“And he said he hoped as how you’d excuse 
his calling so early — and a flower in his but- 
tonhole beautiful,’’ added Betty, in a snorting 
whisper, distinctly audible in the parlor below. 

Then followed some hasty opening and 
shutting of drawers, and hurried footsteps; and 
then Miss Toosey descended, rather fluttered 
and nervous, with her Sunday cap on, and a 
clean pocket-handkerchief. 

“I must introduce myself, Miss Toosey,” 
John said, “for I dare say you have quite for- 
gotten me. ” 

“Forgotten you, Mr. John? Why, I knew 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


29 


you long before you were born, or thought of. 
Oh, dear!” said Miss Toosey, 4< I don’t mean 
that, of course; but I knew your mamma 
before she was born — ” 

‘‘I ought to apologize,” John struck in, anx- 
ious to save Miss Toosey from any further 
floundering in the bogs of memory, “for com- 
ing so early ; but the fact is, that I am going 
up to London this evening; and my mother 
tells me that Dr. Toosey had a very capital 
cure for toothache, and she thought you would 
very likely have kept it, and would let me 
have it.” 

Imposter that he was! looking at her with 
such serious, earnest eyes, when he had com- 
posed this ridiculous and barefaced excuse for 
calling as he came along. 

Miss Toosey racked her brain to remember 
this renowned remedy, and could only recall 
an occasion when she had toothache, and her 
father dragged out a double tooth, with great 
exertion and bad language on his part, and 
great pain and many tears on hers. 

‘‘I cannot quite remember the remedy your 
mamma means; but I have a book full of 
very valuable prescriptions, which I will find 
at once.” 

“Pray don’t trouble, Miss Toosey; I have 


30 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


no toothache at present ; but if you would let 
my mother have it some time at your leisure, I 
should be greatly obliged. ’ * 

And then they talked for five minutes about 
toothache; and John, smiling, showed such 
white, even teeth that you would have fancied 
he had not had much trouble with them ; and 
you would have fancied right. 

“What a curious book you have here,” John 
Rossitter said, looking at a book lying open 
on the table. It was an old book, called “Voy- 
ages and Adventures;” and it was open at an 
awful picture of a cannibal feast, with a man 
being roasted in front of a fire, and a group 
of savages dancing ferociously around, in all 
the horrors of war-paint and feathers, and in 
a simple but effective costume of a necklace, 
a fringe round the waist, a ring in the nose, 
and a penny in the under lip. 

Miss Toosey blushed ; she was not used to 
fashionable picture-galleries where Eves and 
Venuses, in unadorned beauty, are admired 
and criticised by the sensible young people of 
the present day. 

“Though to be sure,” she said afterward, 
“it’s not so bad, a a the poor things are black, 
so they don’t look quite so naked; and 1 always 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


31 


think a white pig is a more indecent-looking 
creature than a black one. ’ ’ 

So she turned his attention with great tact 
to the atlas that was also lying open on the 
table. It was the atlas that was in use fifty 
years ago, and which had been bought for 
Miss Toosey when she went to Miss Singer’s 
“Academy for Young Ladies’’ to be finished. 
At this abode of learning, she had been taught 
to make wax-flowers and do crochet, to speak 
a few words of what was supposed to be 
French, and to play a tune or two laboriously 
on the piano — an education which was con- 
sidered very elegant and elaborate at that 
time, but would hardly, I am afraid, qualify 
her for one of the Oxford and Cambridge 
local examinations, or even for a very high 
standard at a national school. She had also 
learnt a little geography and the use of the 
globes, but not enough to survive for fifty 
years; and she felt quite at sea this morning, 
when she reached down the long-unused atlas 
to find the position of the diocese of Nawaub, 
and, after long study, had arrived at the con- 
clusion that it must be on the celestial globe, 
which had always been a puzzle to her. 

It was no wonder that she had not been able 
to find Nawaub, for where the towns and 


32 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


rivers and mountains and plain stood, which 
the Bishop had described, there was only 
marked on the map, “Undiscovered terri- 
tory,” a vague-looking spot altogether, grad- 
ually shading off into the sea without any 
distinct red or blue line to mark the extent 
of terra firma, as in other parts of the world. 

John Rossitter showed her where he im- 
agined Nawaub to be, and then inquired if she 
were interested in Missions. 

“Well, Mr. John,” Miss Toosey said, “I 
don’t mind telling you, though I have not told 
any one else, except Betty; but I’ve made up 
my mind to go out to Nawaub as soon as I 
can arrange everything.” 

“As a missionary, Miss Toosey?” 

“Yes, Mr. John, as a missionary.” 

She spoke quite quietly, as if she were not 
sixty-five, with a tendency to asthma, and 
more than a tendency to rheumatism, — a nerv- 
ous, fidgety old maid, to whom a journey to 
Bristol was an event to flutter the nerves, and 
cause sleepless nights, and take away the ap- 
petite for some time beforehand. I think the 
very magnitude of her resolution took away 
her attention from the terrible details, just 
as we lose sight of the precipices, chasms, and 
rocks that lie between, when we are looking to 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


33 


the mountain-top. The way to Bristol was 
beset with dangers, such as losing the train, 
getting wrong change when you take your 
ticket, the draughtiness of the waiting-room, 
the incivility of the porters, the trains starting 
from unexpected platforms, the difficulty of 
opening doors and shutting windows, the con- 
stant tendenc3 T to get into smoking-carriages 
by mistake, not to speak of railway accidents, 
and murderers and thieves for traveling com- 
panions; but these were lost sight of in the 
prospect of a journey to the other end of the 
world, full of real, substantial dangers of 
which she was ignorant. This ignorance was 
no doubt a great help to her in some ways; 
she could not form the slightest idea of what 
a missionary’s life really is; nor can you, 
reader, nor can I, though we may have read 
missionary books by the dozen, which Miss 
Toosey had not. But this same ignorance, 
while it covered up many real difficulties, also 
painted grotesque horrors before Miss Toosey’s 
mind, which might well have frightened any 
old maiden lady of sixty-five. She mixed up 
“Greenland’s icy mountains’’ and “Afric’s 
coral strands” with great impartiality in her 
ideas of Nawaub, forming such a frightful 
combination of sandy deserts and icebergs, 


o4 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


lions and white bears, naked black savages 
and snowdrifts, that the stoutest heart might 
have quailed at the prospect; and yet, when 
Miss Toosey came down to breakfast that 
morning, with her mind firmly made up to the 
venture, her little maid, Betty, did not notice 
anything remarkable about her, except that 
her cap was put on wrong side in front, — 
which was not a very unusual occurrence, — 
and that she stirred up her tea with her specta- 
cles once. Her interview with Betty had 
been rather upsetting. Betty was not quick 
at taking in new ideas; and she had got 
it so firmly into her head that Miss Toosey 
was wishing to administer a reproof to her 
about the handle of a certain vegetable dish, 
“which come to pieces in my hand as was that 
cracked,” that it was some time before she 
could be led to think differently; but when at 
last a ray of the truth penetrated her mental 
fog, her feeling can only be described by her 
own ejaculation, “Lor’ now!” which I fear may 
offend ears polite. She had not been at 
church the evening before, having stepped 
round to see her mother, who was “doing 
nicely, thank you, with her fourteenth, a fine 
boy, as kep on with fits constant, till Mr. 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


35 


Glover half-christened him, which James 
Joseph is his name, and better ever since.” 

So it required all Miss Toosey’s eloquence to 
put her scheme before Betty’s plain common 
sense, so as to appear anything but a very 
crazy notion after all ; and it was not till after 
half-an-hour’s severe talking, and more than 
one tear falling on the two and a half pounds 
of neck of mutton, that Betty gave in, which 
she did by throwing her apron over her head, 
and declaring, with a sob, that if Miss Toosey 
4 ‘would go for to do such a thing, she (Betty) 
would take and go too, that she would;” and 
Miss Toosey had to entreat her to remember 
her poor mother before making up her mind 
to such a step. 

But to come back to John Rossitter. He 
was a barrister, you must know, and used to 
examine witnesses, and to turn their heads 
inside out to pick out the grains of truth con- 
cealed there ; and then, too, he had a great 
talent for listening, which is a rarer and more 
valuable gift even than that of fluent speech, 
which he also had at command on occasion. 
He had too a sympathetic, attentive interest 
in his face, that if it was assumed, would have 
made a great actor of him, and that opened 
the people’s hearts to him, as the sun does the 


36 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


flowers. And so Miss Toosey found herself 
laying her mittened hand on his coat-sleeve, 
and looking up into his eyes for sympathy, and 
calling him “my dear,” “just for all the 
world/’ she said, “as if he had been an old 
woman too.” 

And what did he think of. it all? Was he 
laughing at her? Certainly now and then 
there was a little twitch at the corner of his 
mouth and a sparkle in his eye, and once he 
laughed aloud in unconcealed amusement; But 
I like John Rossitter too well to believe that 
he was doing what Dr. Gardener Jones called 
“getting a rise out of the old lady.” It was 
so very easy to make fun of Miss Toosey, and 
draw her out and show up her absurdities, — 
even Mr. Glover, who was not a wit, could be 
exquisitely funny at her expense. But John 
Rossitter was too much of a sportsman to aim 
with his small-bore rifle at a little sparrow in 
a hedgerow ; he left that sort of game for the 
catapults and pop-guns of the yokels. 

And so Miss Toosey confided to him all the 
difficulties that had already come crowding 
into her head as she sat over her work that 
morning, any one of which would have occu- 
pied her mind for days at any other time, — the 
giving notice to leave her house, the disposal 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


37 


of the furniture, — “and you know, Mr. John, 
1 have some really valuable pictures and 
things;” and she could not trust herself to 
glance at the portrait of old Toosey over the 
fireplace, in a black satin waistcoat and bunch 
of seals, a frilled shirt, a high complexion, 
and shiny black hair, with Corinthian pillars 
behind him, lest her eyes, already brimful, 
should overflow. She even consulted him as 
to whether it would be worth while to order 
in more coal, and lamented that she should 
have taken her sitting in church for another 
whole year only last Saturday. And then, 
without quite knowing how, she found herself 
discussing that all-important subject, dress, 
with John Rossitter. 

“Though to be sure, Mr. John, how should 
you know about such things?” 

“Indeed, Miss Toosey, I’m not so ignorant 
as you think ; and I quite agree with you that 
nothing looks so nice as a black silk on Sun- 
day. * ’ 

And Miss Toosey at once resolved to put a 
new braid round the bottom of the skirt as a 
good beginning of her preparations. 

“I’ve got upstairs,” Miss Toosey said reflec- 
tively, “a muslin dress that I wore when Ro- 
sina Smith was married. You remember 

8 Laddie 


38 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


Rosina Smith, Mr. John? No, of course not! 
She must have married before you were born. 
Sweet girl, Mr. John, very sweet! That dress 
has been rough dried for thirty years, and it’s 
not quite in the fashion that ladies wear now; 
in fact, the skirt has only three breadths, which 
is scanty, you know, as dresses go; but I 
thought,” and there Miss Toosey glanced 
timidly at the picture of the cannibals, which 
still lay open, “that perhaps it would not mat- 
ter out there. ” 

“No, indeed, Miss Toosey,” John answered, 
“I should think three breadths would appear 
liberal and ample allowance among people 
whose skirts” — ’he was going to say, “are con- 
spicuous from their absence, ’ ’ but from Miss 
Toosey ’s heightened color he changed it to 
“are not court trains.” 

The next question was whether she had bet- 
ter have it got up before leaving Martel. 

“It might get crumpled in packing; but 
then, how can one guess what sort of laun- 
dresses one may find at the other side of the 
world, — not used, most likely, to getting up 
fine things.” 

“ I have heard, ” said John, very seriously, 
“that in some parts missionaries try as much 
as possible to become like the nations they 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


39 


are wishing to convert, and that the Roman 
Catholic priests in China shave their heads 
and wear pigtails.” 

“Yes, Mr. John, I have heard that,” Miss 
Toosey said; “and their wives” (you see she 
did not rightly understand the arrangements 
of our sister church as to the celibacy of the 
clergy) “cripple their feet in small shoes, 
blacken their teeth, and let their finger-nails 
grow. ’ ’ 

“I suppose,” says John, drawing “Voyages 
and Adventures” nearer, and looking at the 
pictures reflectively, “that the Nawaub mis- 
sionaries don’t go in for that sort of thing.” 

Miss Toosey grew red to the very finger-tips, 
and her back stiffened with horror. 

“No, Mr. John, there is a point beyond 
which I cannot go!” v 

“To be sure! to be sure!” said John consol- 
ingly, “and you see there were no signs of any- 
thing of the kind about the Bishop.” 

“Then there is the food,” Miss Toosey went 
on, reminded of the subject by a whiff of roast 
mutton from the kitchen; “I’m afraid they 
are cannibals, and I don’t think I could ever 
get used to such a thing, for I have never been 
able to touch sucking-pigs since an uncle of 


40 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


mine said it was just like a baby, though, of 
course, he was only in joke.” 

John reassured her on this point. But now 
he presented quite a new difficulty to her mind. 

“Do you understand the Nawaub language? 
I am told it is difficult to acquire. ” 

It had never occurred to Miss Toosey that 
these mysterious people, who were a sort of 
combination of monkey and chimney-sweep, 
spoke a language of their own which she could 
not understand, and that they might not be 
able to comprehend the pure Somersetshire 
English with which she meant to convert them. 
She had never been brought much in contact 
with foreigners, so that she had never realized 
fully the effect of the Tower of Babel. One 
day a French beggar had come to the door, 
and Miss Toosey had summoned up courage to 
pronounce the magic words, “Parlez vous 
Francais, ” which was one of the sentences she 
had learnt at Miss Singer’s; and the beggar 
(the French being proverbially quick-witted) 
had recognized his native tongue ; and there- 
upon ensued such a torrent of rapid speech 
and violent gesticulation, such gabbling and 
grimacing, that Miss Toosey was quite fright- 
ened, and relapsed into plain English when 
she could edge in another word. But then this 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


41 


impudent fellow pretended he did not under- 
stand, and kept on saying, “Not know de Eng- 
lish vot you mean,” though Miss Toosey spoke 
slowly and very loud, and even finally tried a 
little broken English, which must be easier to 
foreigners than the ordinary style of speaking. 
But the man was obstinate, and went away at 
last shaking his head and shrugging his shoul- 
ders in a way which Miss Toosey felt was very 
impudent; “but then, poor creature, he may 
have been a papist.” 

“I’ve not thought about that, Mr. John; but 
I know that savages always like beads and 
looking-glasses, though what pleasure such 
remarkably plain people can get out of a look- 
ing-glass I can't imagine. But I’ve a lot of 
beads put away in one of my boxes upstairs 
when I’ve time for a regular good turn-out; 
and as for looking-glasses, I saw some the 
other day at Gaiter's, with gilt frames, for a 
penny, that make one's nose look crooked, and 
one eye larger than the other ; that I think will 
do nicely. “ 

“By Jove!” says John, “an uncommonly 
good idea — the very thing! I’ll take a look at 
them as I go home, which I must do now, or I 
shall be late for lunch. ” 

But before leaving he advised her not to do 


42 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


anything in a hurry, but before taking any 
decided step, such as having her dress 
starched, or giving notice to leave her house, 
or laying in a stock of looking-glasses, to con- 
sult some old friend, on whose opinion she 
could rely. 

“There’s Mackenzie,’’ he said, “why not go 
to him?’’ 

But Miss Toosey had an uncomfortable feel- 
ing about lawyers, connecting them with verses 
in the Gospels beginning with “woe;’’ and 
though the little Mackenzies were her great 
friends and constant visitors, she avoided their 
father. She suggested Miss Baker; but when 
she added that she was “a really Christian per- 
son," John discouraged the idea, and they 
finally agreed that she should consult Mr. 
Peters, who had known her nearly all her life. 

“He’s not a bad sort of old fellow out of 
church,’’ John said, rather shocking Miss 
Toosey by his want of reverence for the rector ; 
“and he has got some sense in his head as well 
as good nature. So you go to him, Miss Too- 
sey, and the next time I come home, I’ll come 
in and have another crack with you, if you are 
not off to the North Pole or the Moon. ’’ 

John Rossitter smiled more than once as he 
drove home in the dog-cart, at the recollection 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


43 


of Miss Toosey’s confidences; but I fear my 
readers may have grown impatient of the 
absurdities of an ignorant old woman, who had 
got a craze in her head. Yes, she was old and 
poor and weak and ignorant, it is quite true. 
It was a very contemptible barley-loaf which 
she had to offer, pared with your fine, white, 
wheaten cake of youth and riches and strength 
and learning; but remember she offered her 
best freely, willingly, faithfully; and when 
once a thing is offered it is no longer the little 
barley-loaf in the lad’s hand, but the miracu- 
lous, satisfying Bread of Heaven in the hand 
of the Lord of the Harvest, more than suffi- 
cient for the hungry multitude. 


44 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“You are making fun of me, Mr. John." 

“I am incapable of such an action, Miss 
Toosey. ’’ 

Six months have passed since my last chap- 
ter, and John Rossitter has paid many visits to 
the little house in North Street. Indeed, he 
rarely came to Brooklands without going to 
see Miss Toosey, drawn by a strange attraction 
which he hardly understood himself ; though 
he once told his mother that he had fallen in 
love, and asked her how she would like Miss 
Toosey for a daughter-in-law. 

Miss Toosey is still at Martel, and likely to 
remain so. Her interview with Mr. Peters 
put an end to her idea of becoming a mission- 
ary, as John Rossitter quite expected, and also 
provided the rector with a good joke, over 
which he laughs till the tears run down his 
cheeks. It was a very alarming interview to 
Miss Toosey altogether, as the rector was 
seized with an attack of coughing in the mid- 
dle, and sputtered and choked till Miss Toosey 
longed to pat him on the back, if she had 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


45 


dared to venture on such a familiarity with a 
Church dignitary; and for many months she 
puzzled Mrs. Peters by anxious inquiries after 
the rector’s cold and the sad delicacy of his 
throat, and advised gargling with port-wine 
and alum, and other decoctions of marvelous 
ecstasy. 

Miss Toosey’s missionary ardor was by no 
means damped, only it was turned into a fresh 
channel. “Your money,” the Bishop had 
said, “was another of those barley -loaves of 
every-day life that most people had in some 
proportion to offer;” thinking principally of 
the luxury and extravagance of fashionable 
life, and of the superfluity that might so well 
be cast into his empty treasury. There was 
not much luxury or extravagance in the little 
house in North Street; indeed, it was only by 
close management that two ends could be 
brought to meet; and even in little charities 
to poor neighbors (infinitesimally small though 
they might be) she was never in danger of 
offering to God that which cost her nothing. 
So it was an unsatisfactory thing to review 
her expenditure, with a view to greater econ- 
omy, “with butcher’s meat quite a fancy price, 
and everything else to match;” but she was 
not easily daunted, as you know, and she 


46 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


applied to Mr. Peters to procure her a box in 
which to collect for the Nawaub Mission. She 
did not allow him to forget it or to convince 
her that a Church Missionary box, or one for 
the Irish Society, would do quite as well; and 
when at last she had it, she carried it home 
with great pride, and gave it the place of honor 
in the center of her table on the bead mat, in 
place of the lava inkstand that had been one 
of Mrs. Toosey’s wedding presents. 

It was this box that was now forming the 
subject of conversation between her and Mr. 
Rossitter, for she was to take it that very after- 
noon to the rectory to be opened, and the con- 
tents were to be forwarded to the Bishop. 
John had been commenting on its weight, and 
had told Miss Toosey that she would be 
obliged to have the omnibus from the “Hare 
and Hounds” to take it to the rectory, or, at 
any rate, a wheelbarrow and a strong man. 
And so it came that she accused him of laugh- 
ing at her. 

“But it really is very heavy. I wonder you 
are not afraid of thieves coming to carry it off 
at night. ” 

“Well, Mr. John, I was rather nervous now 
and then. There have been very odd noises 
at night, and though Betty says it’s the mice, 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


47 


I can’t always quite believe it. I always hide 
the box when I go out, and now and then I 
forget where I put it; and, oh dear! what a 
search we had the other day! I was in such a 
fright, and where do you think it was? Why, 
behind the shavings in the fireplace. Wasn’t 
it a capital place? No thief would have dreamt 
of looking there.” 

4 ‘It’s a good thing that you are going to 
empty it to-day, or I might have been tempted 
to play burglar to-night.” 

44 Well, you see, Mr. John, it’s not really so 
valuable as you might think, for it’s chiefly 
pence and a good sprinkling of farthings, and 
they don’t come up to much of a sum. You 
see, I have been obliged to take a little here 
and a little there, not being rich, Mr. John, 
or having much to spare. One thing I always 
put in, ‘Your change, with thanks;’ don’t you 
know those pretty little envelopes that they put 
pence in at Knight’s and Jones’ and one or 
two other places, with ‘Your change, with 
thanks,’ in mauve on the back? I always took 
that for my box, and I felt quite pleased when 
they had not a threepenny bit, so that I got 
more pence. And then, when the butcher’s 
book came to five and sixpence halfpenny, Mr. 
Barker often says, ‘Never mind the halfpenny, 


48 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


Miss Toosey, ’ and I put it into my box ; and 
sometimes I get a halfpenny on the washing. 
Of course, it seems very little, but it all helps. 
And then I fine myself. I got a good deal that 
way. A halfpenny if I lose my spectacles. A 
penny if I go to sleep in church; yes, Mr. 
John, I’m sorry to say I do drop off now and 
then. I know it’s very wrong, but it’s won- 
derful how it cures you of such habits if you 
have to pay for them; I don’t lose my spec" 
tacles half so often as I used to; indeed, I feel 
quite vexed sometimes that I don’t get more 
fines; but I don’t think it fair to lose them on 
purpose. I might save a good deal more if it 
wasn’t for Betty. She’s a good girl and hon- 
est, and much attached to me; but she’s very 
obstinate and wrong-headed. The fuss that 
girl made about my letting the fire out now 
and then of an afternoon ; for the winter has 
been mild, Mr. John, and coals such a price! 
After I’d done it once or twice, she found out 
it was not an accident, and she would come 
bouncing in and put on coals every half-hour, 
till there was a fire fit to roast an ox, and once 
she gave warning because I did not take a sec- 
ond helping at dinner. But there’s one thing I 
can do without another year, which no one can 
object to, and that is my sitting in church. 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


49 


The free-seats are so comfortable that it really 
would be a change for the better, except per- 
haps as to the hearing. ” 

Just at this point some fresh visitors arrived, 
and John prepared to go; but, finding the pas- 
sage blocked by a double perambulator, and a 
smiling nurse and nursemaid exchanging con- 
fidences with Betty at the door, and hearing 
the tallest of the visitors (who was about as 
high as the table) declare that “Mamma said 
they were not to stop, but she sent her love 
and the c Graphic,’ ’’ he resumed his seat, and 
offered a knee and an inspection of his watch to 
the two nearest young Mackenzies. There 
were nine young Mackenzies, of all ages ; every 
year a fresh curly head or Sunday hat appeared 
in the square pew by the north door, which 
Mr. Peters compared to a pigeon pie, till at 
last it ran over altogether into another seat by 
the pulpit, which could hardly contain them 
now. 

Miss Toosey’s present visitors were the 
younger detachment, all of them pretty more 
or less with that beauty which has been called 
“the sacrament of goodness and innocence,” — 
cheerful souls, not tall enough to see troubles, 
—very well contented with life as seen from 
near the ground, which is, I fancy a much 


50 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


more amusing point of view than we enjoy. 
They had a good deal of information to give, 
unintelligible to John, but Miss Toosey gave a 
free translation which enlightened his dark- 
ness. Life was more than usually cheerful that 
morning, for they had met that walking 
money-bag, papa, as they went out, whose 
store of pennies was inexhaustible when he 
could be cajoled or teased into feeling in his 
pocket. To-day, in a moment of lavish gener- 
osity, he had given a penny all round, even to 
Kitty, who had conveyed it at once to her 
mouth, without waiting for the visit to Mrs. 
Goodenough’s, which transformed pennies- into 
all that heart can desire. 

“Mine penny!” says Mabel, who is rather 
solemnized by her position on John’s knee; 
and she allows him to catch a glimpse of her 
treasure, clasped tightly in her soft knitted 
glove, in which the fingers live all together in 
dimpled friendliness, and the thumb only 
enjoys a house to itself. 

“What are you going to buy?” asks John. 

“Bung,” is the decided answer. 

Meanwhile, the other children are examining 
the money-box on the table, rattling its con- 
tents in a manner deafening to older ears, till 
Miss Toosey begins to tell them of the poor lit- 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


51 


tie black children who never go to church or 
say their prayers, which rouses great interest. 

“Naughty, wicked little children,” is the 
universal opinion. 

“Poor little things!” says Miss Toosey re- 
provingly, “they have not any church to go to, 
and they have never been taught to say their 
prayers.” 

I am afraid some of the little Mackenzies 
were disposed to eijvy the little black children, 
who could go straight into their cribs when 
they were sleepy, and play at dolls any day in 
the week. But they were discreetly silent 
while Miss Toosey explained that the money 
in the box was to go out to make them good 
little black boys and girls. 

“Make them white,” says Ben decisively. 

Miss Toosey is embarrassed, regarding 
things from a severely literal point of view ; 
but John comes to the rescue. 

“Yes, that’s about it, young man.” 

And just then Maudie discovers the “dear 
little darling hole” at the top where the pen- 
nies go in, and all the children admire it and 
feel it, and Mabel pats with her woolly gloves, 
repeating gravely, “Make black boy white.” 

I don’t know quite how it happened, for all 
the other children were under the sofa, trying 


52 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


to catch Sammy the cat, and Miss Toosey dis- 
tracted by her anxiety lest they or the cat 
should get hurt, and Mabel was placidly tap- 
ping the box with her penny, repeating “Make 
black boy white” at intervals; when John 
heard a sudden rattle, and, looking down, said, 
“Hello!” for the knitted glove was empty- 
and Mabel looked up at him with rather an 
awe-struck face, repeating “Make black boy 
white. ” 

“Oh, Mr. John!” Miss Toosey exclaimed, 
with her eyes filling with tears, “the dear, 
sweet little angel, giving her little all to the 
Mission! How touching! — how beautiful!” 

John, however, whose eyes were not full of 
tears, saw an ominous quivering about the lit- 
tle angel’s under lip, and an anxious feeling of 
knitted gloves round the “dear, darling little 
hole,” as if the penny might yet be recovered, 
and as if the giver had not realized the fatal 
and irretrievable nature of putting into a mis- 
sionary-box. The full sense of her loss at last 
overwhelmed her, and she burst into uncon- 
trollable grief, “I wants my penny,” being 
the burden of the tale. 

It was in vain John handed her over to Miss 
Toosey, who quickly supplied her with another 
penny, and supplemented it with a biscuit and 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


53 


a lump of sugar; it was not “mine penny, 
what papa gave me!” and at last she was car- 
ried off sobbing, and casting looks of fear and 
aversion at the missionary-box on the table. 

That afternoon, as John was on the way to 
the station, he saw Miss Toosey wending her 
way thoughtfully up High Street, and he 
crossed over and joined her. She was on her 
way home from the rectory, and her first re- 
mark to John Rossitter was, “Do you believe in 
miracles, Mr. John?’’ 

“As described in the Bible?’’ 

“Oh, no; of course, every one believes in 
them. I mean miracles now. ’’ 

“Well, Miss Toosey, if you mean winking 
Virgins and hysterical peasant girls, I am 
afraid I am rather skeptical.’’ 

“Ah, Mr. John! that’s what I thought to 
myself. It’s popish to believe in such things 
nowadays — all superstition and such like, — so 
I’m glad I did not tell Miss Baker what came 
into my head. ’’ 

“May I ask what it was? I don’t think you 
are at all popish.’’ 

“Well, I’ll tell you. It’j my missionary- 
box. Now, Mr. John, how much do you think 
there was in it?” 

“I have not the least idea. ’’ 

0 Laddie 


54 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


“Well, there was six pounds nine and seven- 
pence three farthings.” Miss Toosey’s voice 
sank to an impressive whisper, and she stood 
still, looking at John as if he might be so over- 
come by surprise as to drop his bag and um- 
brella, or require support to prevent him from 
falling. But he only said, — 

“You don’t say so,” in a very ordinary tone 
of voice. 

“Six pounds nine and sevenpence three far- 
things,” repeated Miss Toosey, emphasizing 
the six pounds, as if he had not appreciated 
the vastness of the sum. 

“Ah!” said John; “I’m sure it does credit 
to you, Miss Toosey; who would have thought 
that ‘Your change, with thanks’ would have 
added up so. I am afraid you must have gone 
to sleep in church very often.” 

“But it could not have been that,” went on 
Miss Toosey solemnly. “One pound nine and 
sevenpence three farthings were principally in 
coppers, and any sixpenny or fourpenny bits I 
could account for. But the five pounds were 
in a note, so it could not have been change or 
a fine.” 

“You must have slipped it in some day by 
chance with other money. ” ’ 

“No, for I never have notes. When I draw 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


55 


my money, I always get it in gold, for I am 
always afraid of notes blowing into the fire or 
getting torn up. And, besides,” went on Miss 
Toosey, “I’m not so rich, Mr. John, that I 
could lose even sixpence without knowing it.” 

“It is very strange,” said John. 

“Strange!” seemed a mild expression to 
Miss Toosey, to whom it appeared miraculous. 
“I don’t know how to account for it, Mr. John. 
I suppose it’s wrong to think it a miracle, but 
I could not help thinking of what happened 
this morning.” 

“What was that?” 

“Why, don’t you remember that dear child 
putting her penny into the box?” 

“Oh, yes, and making such a hullaballoo 
afterward. ” 

Miss Toosey had not wished to recall that 
part of the affair. “It was so sweetly done. ” 

“Yes, but you gave it back directly.” 

Miss Toosey felt quite cross at such incon- 
venient remarks, interrupting her miracle ; but 
she continued, relapsing into a confidential 
whisper, — 

“You see, Mr. John, it was a lad that 
brought the five barley-loaves, and I thought 
perhaps the baby’s penny might have been 
turned into a five-pound note.” 


56 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


John made no comment, and she went on as 
much to herself as to him, — 

“I suppose it’s popish to think of such a 
thing and besides, one would have thought if 
it had been a miracle, it would have been quite 
a new Bank of England note, but it was one of 
Tuckey’s, crumpled and dirty, that had been 
cut in half, and joined down the middle with 
the edge of stamps, and it had Mr. Purts’ name 
written on the back. But still,” said Miss 
Toosey wistfully, as they came to the station- 
road, and John shook hands in parting, ‘‘It’s 
God that gives the increase anyhow, miracle 
or not, and He knows all about it.” 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


57 


CHAPTER V. 

Miracles do not happen every day ; and Miss 
Toosey’s money-box did not contain a bank- 
note the next time it was opened, or any sum 
that Miss Toosey could not well account for; 
indeed, it was rather less than more than she 
expected, even though the cost of her sitting in 
church was added to it. She did not, however, 
carry out her plan of sitting in the free seats, 
for when she spoke to Mr. Budd about giving 
up her seat, Mr. Peters happened to be pres- 
ent, and he would not hear of such a thing. 
“Why, Miss Toosey, we should not know our- 
selves if you were not in your usual place.” 
And Mr. Budd added, that “Some one, as did 
not wish to be mentioned, had offered to pay 
the rent rather than Miss Toosey should give 
it up.” So it was arranged that she should 
still occupy the seat, at any rate, till it was 
wanted for some one else, and as the Martel 
congregations were not overflowing, Miss 
Toosey was not likely to be turned out. She 
did not quite like this arrangement; she felt 
rather like an impostor as she passed the free 


58 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


seats, and Mr. Wyatt opened the pew-door for 
her; and it took off much of the pleasure when 
she dropped the money (that would otherwise 
have been paid to Mr. Budd) into her box; 
for, as she said, she did not feel the want of it, 
so it hardly seemed like giving at all. 

I must not stop to describe at any length 
Miss Toosey’s other missionary efforts, though 
she did not forget the other barley loaves of 
which the Bishop had spoken, — “her time, her 
influence, and her prayers,” — or I could tell 
you of her numerous disappointments in 
answering advertisements such as — “To those 
of either sex, anxious to increase their in- 
come;” and “^2 weekly easily realized;” and 
of her venturing a 5s. subscription to a 
“Ladies’ Needlework Society,” which entitled 
her to send six articles for sale to a shop in a 
fashionable part of London; and how she 
accomplished an antimacassar of elaborate de- 
sign to send up there. As to her influence, 
that was a puzzling matter to one who had 
such a humble opinion of herself as Miss 
Toosey; and she nearly worked herself into a 
nervous fever through her attempts to mention 
the subject to some of the wealthy shopkeepers 
or others in Martel; and at last she adopted 
the plan of distributing leaflets, and invested 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


59 


in a small bundle of missionary subjects, 
which she left about in a surreptitious, stealthy 
way, in shops, or at the railway station, or 
slipped between the pages of a “Society” 
book, or even sometimes on the high road, 
with a stone to keep them from blowing away. 
Even with these precautions, she managed to 
give great offense to Mrs. Gardener Jones, 
who found a leaflet in a book sent on from 
Miss Toosey’s, and who, being of a very dark 
complexion and Eastern cast of countenance, 
took the matter as a personal insinuation 
about her birth. So it was quite a relief to 
Miss Toosey to turn to the last barley-loaf 
that the Bishop had mentioned, — “ her 
prayers;” at any rate, she could give that with 
all her heart. She found a missionary prayer 
in an old magazine, written in an inflated, 
pompous style, with long words and involved 
sentence, as different as possible from the 
great simplicity of that prayer in which chil- 
dren of all ages and degrees of learning 
through all time are taught to address “Our 
Father;” but she was not critical; and the 
feeling she expressed in those words was not 
rendered less simple or earnest by its pompous 
clothing. 

“Where is Miss Toosey?” John Rossitter 


60 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


asked his mother one Sunday morning, as 
they drove home from church; “she was not 
there this morning. ” 

“Well, I think I heard some one say she was 
ill. Yes, it was Mr. Ryder told me she was 
laid up with cold or something. She has not 
been at church for several Sundays; and really 
the draught from the vestry-door is dreadful.” 

After church that evening, a sudden impulse 
seized John to go and see how Miss Toosey 
was; and when he had packed his mother into 
the brougham, with her rugs and furs, he 
turned off toward North Street, among the 
groups of people returning from church. It 
was a cold October evening, with great, sol- 
emn, bright stars overhead, and a frosty still- 
ness in the air, which sets one listening for 
something above the trifling noices of this lit- 
tle world. Sunday visitors were rare at Miss 
Toosey’ s, and, as Betty said, “It give her 
quite a turn” when John’s sharp knock came 
at the door. 

“She’s very middlin’,” she said, in answer 
to John’s inquiries; “and she’ve been terribly 
low this evening, as ain’t like her.” 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Well, Mr. Ryder do say as it’s the brongty- 
pus and indigestion of the lungs,” said Betty 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


61 


in an awful voice, feeling that so many syl- 
lables must prove fatal; “and as I was setting 
by the kitching fire last night a coffin popped 
right out, and — ’’ 

“All right,” said John. “Is she in bed?” 

“No, she ain’t kep’ her bed a whole day, 
though she did ought to. But come in, doee 
now; it will cheer her up a bit to see you.” 

John Rossitter was quite shocked to see the 
change in Miss Toosey when he went into the 
parlor. She was sitting in the arm-chair by 
the fire, wrapped up in a big shawl, looking so 
small and shrunken and old and feeble, that 
you could hardly have recognized the brisk 
little lady who was prepared to cross the seas 
and enter on the toils and perils of a mission- 
ary life ; indeed, she looked more ready for the 
last short journey across Jordan’s narrow 
stream, which ends all our traveling days, and 
' to enter into the life where toils and perils are 
| replaced by rest. She had been crying too, 
and could hardly summon up a wintry smile 
to receive John ; and the tears overflowed more 
| than once while he talked of his journey down, 
and his mother’s rheumatism, and the tree that 
had been blown down the night before in their 
garden, trying to interest her and distract her 
thoughts by talking on indifferent subjects. 

10 Laddie 


62 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


His hand was resting on the table as he spoke, 
and, without thinking, he took hold of the mis- 
sionary-box close by, and weighed it in his 
fingers. He hardly knew what he had in his 
hand, till Miss Toosey burst out crying, and 
covered her eyes with her handkerchief. 

“It is nearly empty, ” sobbed the poor old 
lady; “nearly empty!” 

And then John Rossitter pulled his chair 
nearer to hers, and laid one of his warm, strong 
hands on her poor little weak cold one, and said, 
“What is it you are fretting about? Tell me.” 

And then she told him, sometimes inter- 
rupted by her sobs, sometimes by the fits of 
coughing that left her very breathless and 
exhausted. It had all failed, all the five barley 
loaves she had had to offer; they were all 
worthless. She was too old and foolish and 
ignorant to give herself for the work; she was 
too poor to give any money, and the little she 4 
had saved with much care must go now for the 
doctor’s bill; she had tried to give her time, 
but her antimacassars would not sell, and she 
could not paint photographs; then she tried 
her influence; but she did not think she had 
any, for every one laughed when she spoke to 
them about the missions, and Mrs. Gardener 
Jones was offended when she gave her a tract 




MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


63 


with a negro’s face on it, and “Am I not a man 
and a brother?” 

“Then there was only my prayers, Mr. John, 
and I did think I could have done that at least; 
and I did keep on regularly with that prayer 
out of the magazine, but the last three nights 
I’ve been so tired and worn out that Betty 
would make me say my prayers after I was in 
bed; and I don’t really think I could have 
knelt down; and every night I’ve dropped off 
to sleep before I got to the poor heathen. So 
I’ve failed in that, too. And I’ve been think- 
ing, thinking, thinking, as I sat here to-night, 
Mr. John, that perhaps the Lord would not 
take my barley loaves because they were so 
good-for-nothing ; but I’d nothing else, noth- 
ing else!” 

I do not think that John Rossitter had ever 
spoken a word on religious subjects in his life ; 
he avoided discussion on such matters like the 
plague; and he was one of those reserved, 
deep natures who shrink from letting curious 
eyes peer into the sanctuary of their faith, 
and from dissecting their religious opinions 
with that clumsy scalpel, the tongue. Unin- 
spired words seemed to him to be too rude 
and unwieldy to convey the subtle mysteries 
of faith, to break with their jarring insuffi- 


64 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


ciency into the harmony of praise, to weigh 
down the wing of prayer that is struggling 
toward Heaven, to trouble the waters where 
we are trying to see the reflection “as in a 
glass darkly.” There is but one power can 
open the close-sealed lips of such a nature, and 
that is when the angel takes a live coal from 
the great Altar of love and lays it on his mouth ; 
and then he speaks, with a power wanting in 
the glib outpourings of a shallower nature. 
And so John Rossitter found himself speaking 
words of comfort to Miss Toosey, which seemed 
like a new language to his unaccustomed lips; 
telling her how small, how poor everything 
earthly is in God’s sight, and yet how nothing 
is too small, nothing too poor for the good 
Lord’s notice; how the greatest saint is, after 
all, only an unprofitable servant; and how 
He can take a loving, humble heart in His hand 
and make it as much as He would. 

“And you’re sure, quite sure, that it’s not 
because He’s angry with me that He has not 
made use of me?” 

“Dear old friend, He may make use of you 
yet.” 

She was coughing badly just then, and when 
the fit was over she shook her head. “Not very 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


65 


likely now, Mr. John; but He knows I was 
willing, so it doesn’t matter.” 

She got more cheerful then, and asked him 
to come and see her again before he went back 
to London, which he promised to do; and then 
he rose to go away. 

“You must not fret about the empty box,” 
he said, “or I shall scold you next time I come. 
And, look here, Miss Toosey, you have never 
asked me to subscribe, though I have often 
teased you by pretending to put buttons and 
rubbish into the box. ’ ’ 

“Will you really?” she said. “I always fan- 
cied that you did not hold with missions, and 
thought them rather nonsense, though you 
were so kind to me about it ; but if you would, 
it would be a comfort to think the box was 
not quite empty.” 

He felt in his pocket, but his purse was not 
there. “You must give me credit, Miss 
Toosey,” he said, smiling; “I shall consider it 
a debt. I promise to give — let me see — I must 
think how much I can afford. I promise to 
give something to your Mission. And now 
make haste to bed and get well. ” 

She was collecting her things together to go 
upstairs, — her spectacle-case, Bible, and one 
or two books; and out of one of them a printed 


66 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


bit of paper slipped and fluttered to John Ross- 
itter’s feet as he stood at the door. It was the 
prayer for missions cut out of the magazine. 
He picked it up. 

“And don’t fret yourself about the prayer 
either,’’ he said; “let me have it, may I? And 
suppose I say it for you? And don’t you 
think that ‘Thy kingdom come’ will do for 
your missionary prayer till you are better?’’ 

And she smiied and nodded just like her old 
self as he went out. 

“She will soon be better,’’ John said to 
Betty, as he passed her in the passage ; but he 
did not guess how soon. 

“Mother,’’ he said next morning, coming 
into the breakfast-room with a large bunch of 
bloomy grapes in his hand, “will you make 
my peace with Rogers? I have cut the best 
bunch in his house, and I go in fear of my life 
from his vengeance. ’ ’ 

“My dear John, how very inconsiderate you 
are ! He will be so vexed ! Why could not 
you have asked him for it?’’ 

“It was a sudden temptation that overtook 
me when I passed through ; and I am going to 
take them to Miss Toosey; and if there is any- 
thing else nice you can suggest for that poor 
little soul, I’ll take it along with them ’’ 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


67 


Mrs. Rossiter was kind-hearted and liberal, 
and she promised to send one of the maids into 
Martel that afternoon with some invalid dain- 
ties; but John insisted on taking the grapes 
himself, and marched off with them after 
breakfast, regardless of the expostulations of 
his mother and Humphrey, who had other 
views for passing the morning. 

As John Rossitter turned the corner into 
North Street he ran up against Mr. Ryder, and 
stopped to talk to him about the pheasant- 
shooting in the Rentmore coverts. “I am just 
going to ask for Miss Toosey,” he said, as they 
were parting. 

“Miss Toosey. Then you need not go any 
further; she died last night. ” 

“Died!” 

“Yes, poor old soul; and it was only a won- 
der that she lived so long.” 

John Rossitter turned and went on without 
another word, leaving the doctor staring after 
him in surprise. He went on to the house 
mechanically, and had knocked at the door 
before he recollected that there was no longer 
any object in his visit. Betty opened the door, 
with a red, swollen face, and burst out crying 
at the sight of him, and threw her apron over 
her head in uncontrolled grief. 


68 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


“All right,” he said, “I know;” and passed 
by her and went into the little parlor, and sat 
down in the same chair that he had sat in the 
night before, and again involuntarily lifted the 
missionary-box in his hand. Presently Betty, 
having partly recovered herself, sidled into the 
room, glad of company in the “unked” quiet 
of the house. He asked no questions ; and by 
and by she summoned courage to tell him how 
the quiet end came at midnight. “Miss Baker 
have been in this morning already, asking me 
no end of questions; and she were quite put 
out with me because I hadn’t nothing to tell, 
and because Miss Toosey, poor dear! hadn’t 
said a lot of texts and fine things. She says, 
‘Was it a triumphal death?’ says she. And I 
said as how I didn’t know as what that might 
be ; and then she worrited to know what was 
the very last words as ever Miss Toosey said, 
and I didn’t like for to tell her, but she would 
have it. You see, sir, the old lady said her 
prayers just as usual; and when I went in to 
see as she were all right on my way to bed, she 
says, ‘I’m pretty comfortable, Betty,’ says she; 
‘good-night to you; and you’ve not forgotten 
to give Sammy his supper?’ — as is the cat, sir. 
And them’s the last words she uttered; for 
when I come in half-an-hour after, hearing her 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


69 


cough, I could see the change was a-coming. 
But Miss Baker she didn’t like it when I told 
her, though it were her own fault for asking; 
and she says, ‘So she didn’t testify to her 
faith,’ says she. And I didn’t know what she 
might mean, so I says “She were always good 
and kind to me and every one,’ says I; and so 
she were,’’ added Betty, touching unknow- 
ingly on a great truth; “and if that’s testify- 
ing to her faith, she’ve adone it all her life.” 

And then she left him sitting there and mus- 
ing on the quiet close of a quiet life, or rather 
the quiet passing into a fuller life ; for what is 
death but “an episode in life?’’ There was 
nothing grand or striking in Miss Toosey’s 
death — there very rarely is ; it is only now and 
then that there is a sunset glory over this life’s 
evening; generally those around see only the 
seed sown in weakness and dishonor ; generally 
when the glad summons comes, “Friend, come 
up higher,’’ the happy soul rises up eager to 
obey, and leaves “the lower places’’ without 
giving those left behind even a glance of the 
brightness of the wedding garment, or a word 
of the fulness of joy in the Bridegroom’s Pres- 
ence. 

And presently John Rossitter came away; 
and though he held the missionary-box thought- 


70 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


fully in his hand, he put nothing into it. Had 
he forgotten his promise to Miss Toosey, which 
he said he regarded as a debt, to give some- 
thing to her Mission? ..... 

“And so there is an end of poor Miss Toosey 
and her Mission!” said Mr. Peters a few days 
later, as he met Mr. Glover returning from her 
funeral at the cemetery; and Mr. Glover echoed 
the words with a superior, pitying smile: “So 
there is an end of poor Miss Toosey and her 
Mission!” 

Poor Miss Toosey! Why do people so often 
use that expression about the happy dead? 
Surely they might find a more appropriate one 
for those who have left the sordid poverty of 
life behind them and have entered into so rich 
an inheritance! Of course they do not really 
mean that it was “an end of Miss Toosey,” for 
did they not say every Sunday, “I believe in 
the resurrection of the body and the life ever- 
lasting?” and how could they call that an end 
which was only the beginning of new life? So 
this was only a figure of speech. But perhaps 
you will echo Mr. Glover’s sigh over the end of 
her Mission, and regret that such zeal and ardor 
should have been wasted and produced no 
results. Wait a bit! There is no waste in 
nature, science teaches us; neither is there any 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION. 


71 


in grace, says faith. We cannot always see 
the results, but they are there as surely in grace 
as in nature. 

That same evening John Rossitter wrote to 
the Bishop of Nawaub, and very humbly and 
diffidently offered himself, his young life, his 
health and his strength, his talents and ener- 
gies, his younger son’s portion, all that God 
had given him, for his Master’s use; and the 
Bishop, who never ceased to pray “the Lord 
of the Harvest to send forth laborers into the 
harvest,’’ thanked God and took courage. 


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THREE WOMEN. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. Presentation 
Edition — art binding, gold top, boxed, $1.50. 

Her latest and greatest poem. This marvelous narrative of 
thrilling interest depicts the lives of three good and beautiful 
women in every phase of weakness , passion , pride , love, sympathy 
and tenderness. 

AN AMBITIOUS MAN. (Prose.) 12mo, cloth. $1.00. 

“Vivid realism stands forth from every page of this fascinating 
book.”— Every Day . 


WORKS OF ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (Continued) 


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$2.50. 

A choice collection of recitations, specially compiled for read- 
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“Her name is a household word. Her great power lies in depict- 
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—love — she wields the pen of a master.” — The Saturday Record. 

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A grand epic of the exploits and massacre of the immortal 
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‘‘One cannot help gaining new impetus for the spiritual exist- 
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MEN, WOMEN AND EMOTIONS. (Prose.) 12mo, heavy 
enameled paper cover, 50 cents ; English cloth, $1.00. 

A skillful analysis of social habits, customs and follies. 

“Her fame has reached all parts of the world, and her popular- 
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THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD. (Poems, songs and 
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The delight of the nursery. A charming mother’s book. 

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